tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-112402702024-03-16T11:52:35.405-07:00hightouchmegastoreAugust 2010Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.comBlogger2340125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-59699498062388324892019-09-04T13:09:00.000-07:002019-09-04T13:11:09.605-07:00Home from travels.It's been, as the kids say, a minute. Well, I lived my life, I did what I did, and now I'm sleeping in my own bed again--sleeping well, it must be said, which, at this late date in my life, is not nothing, I tell you, in fact sometimes it feels like everything.<br />
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We got home from Scotland, dazed from everything we'd experienced.<br />
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"Remember when we went to Ireland, then England, then Scotland? Remember when we were gone for weeks and weeks?" I say to the historian. He does remember. We remember everything.<br />
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We've seen my folks again, several times. I've gone to Pilates and the gym and to HIGH Fitness. We've eaten enchiladas. We've seen a few movies. I've been back to my writing group. I've written and delivered a poem at Convocation. I've had breakfast and lunch and coffee with my friends.<br />
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When we planned this trip, I wanted to be gone long enough, gone thoroughly enough, to feel like I was not on a vacation, rather living my life in other places. And I did feel that. I felt at home in the world. Of course it was still in a sense a vacation--a leaving of one's ordinary life to experience extraordinary things. This trip delivered that, and in spades. But what I really cherish is a feeling that I could do--could be--anywhere, and live my life.<br />
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I'm back now. And I want to see if I can sustain at least that dimension of our epic travels. We'll see.<br />
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During this sabbatical, when I am writing and also undertaking a substantial project that I'll talk, I'm sure, more about later, I want to use this blog as a space to keep a record, to talk about what's happening. It will be another space to be, to do, to live my life.<br />
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The future<br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i>Imagine a shore, </i>says the clairvoyant, when I ask</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">about the future. <i>Imagine a river emptying itself </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>into the sea. It’s dusk, </i>she goes on, <i>but light enough </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>that you can see the river moving out, its direction sure. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I can see it, in fact I’ve been there recently. Overhead,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">terns wheel and cry. Walk downshore, where the sea</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">moves in, the salt giving it greater weight. The slap</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and churn, cold and immediate, of this meeting</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">of waters is an inevitability. I watch the sun fall, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">its theater of blaze. I’ve come to her to ask </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">about the future and its brightness, by what measure </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">we might predict or calibrate it. I’ve come to believe </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">that everything depends on this, so when she replies, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Imagine you’re at altitude, flying across an ocean from </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>one continent to another, </i>I’m impatient, but I do it,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">depart the shore, see myself in a metal capsule, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">at a window that frames nothing but sky upon </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">more sky, and in my mind, we’re in it and of it </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and above it, somehow, and also drowning in it, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">perhaps swimming to a far-off shore—l even hear </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the voice of the cabin attendant intoning <i>in </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>the unlikely event of an emergency landing</i>, and outside </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the imagined window, the firmament dissolves</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">into blue mist, diffracted light, a structure made </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">for holding nothing but its own airy figment:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I look again, and the clouds fissure into a sheet </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">of ice, floes adrift, more and more water. I want</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to believe in a better ending, to believe that we tilt</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">toward hope. I fret in the near-silent alcove</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">where this oracular stranger tells me, in figures,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">what can be made of this moment, this <i>now,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">deposited like river matter, the dregs of the past.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The coins to pay her clink in my pocket. I should not</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">have asked about the world, or the future, at least </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">not directly. I should have asked her, <i>is there form </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>or efficacy, or beauty, still to be made in this world? </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Even though I already know the answer: yes and no, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the sea roars in salt and the river meets it, its sediments</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">suspended and dazzling. A plane flies miles above </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">earth, combustible device, and in so doing plunders </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the air. The wreck of an old fishing boat, there, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">in the mud, is the past, falling apart now and for years</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to come. The inexorable silt the river carries makes </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and undoes this estuary. When the harbor seal bobs up </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to inspect me, that’s the now and also the future: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">we are momentary peers, investigating one another, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">as I disturb his habitat. When I paint the future, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">it is luminous but with a wash of gray, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and when I spell out its sentence, it is an anagram </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">for <i>insurmountable.</i> That’s not quite right: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the anagram is made of <i>reckoning. </i>I say </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to the clairvoyant, <i>The world is on fire, w</i>hich is not </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">a question, and she replies, <i>but the world </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>has always burned</i>. This answers nothing, though I know </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">it is a kind of truth, yet devoid of the particulars </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">that lend a divination its requisite weight. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The world is burning </i>now, I say. She doesn’t need </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to repeat it: <i>it has always burned, </i>but at least I know</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">this blaze has history, and that I must learn it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">From that shore I might pick up two stones: one </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">for ballast, and one to remind me of the past, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">already here, as I go forward, and that, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">in a burning world, we’d better be prepared </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to carry water.</span></div>
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Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-59269143008427451332019-07-21T04:44:00.000-07:002019-07-21T13:27:49.637-07:00The past.When we checked out of our beautiful house by the sea, our proto-crypto dream house, it was raining. The wetsuits we had draped across the fence were newly wet. Our bags, full of the things we’d packed and the things we’d bought, jenga’d into the boot of the passenger van. And off we went.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0rotFt22hHy7K5oM3-OgWpGNEUN6pEOnXs0nOguGebbaaO5Z_AHmQCPEXCb_wdanZizdzpOCWQpg-jm4sQ0QIXCi4A_Os2S5IA2y2kIfCFk0qFRTpkb_aAgNrqG3w7iL_fy7f/s1600/2D280FF8-CB20-436D-A808-F72A43ABCE5B.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0rotFt22hHy7K5oM3-OgWpGNEUN6pEOnXs0nOguGebbaaO5Z_AHmQCPEXCb_wdanZizdzpOCWQpg-jm4sQ0QIXCi4A_Os2S5IA2y2kIfCFk0qFRTpkb_aAgNrqG3w7iL_fy7f/s320/2D280FF8-CB20-436D-A808-F72A43ABCE5B.jpeg" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Ives, this was the last day of our acquaintance.</td></tr>
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<br />
Our plan was to drive to St Helens, on the outskirts of Liverpool, with a stop in Bath to see the Roman baths. This would be roughly halfway between St. Ives and Inverurie, our Scotland home for the next two weeks. What could not been predicted was mayhem on the motorway. This, combined with what can only be described as an avant garde Sat Nav, took us through the highways and the hedgerows and the byways of the southwest of England, and roughly doubled our estimated time to destination.<br />
<br />
We drove past signs for an event called the Buddhafield Festival. This event lasted four days in the Blackdown Hills of Somerset. My son in law, our intrepid driver and my interlocutor for the journey, since I sat next to him (riding bitch, as my daughter pointed out)—and even though this involved sitting in the middle seat on the front bench, it ended up being one of the best parts of it all, since now we, my son and law and I, had a shared experience of, if not trauma, then at least an unanticipated—if not nightmare, then at least a super long van ride in a close space—with unpredictable teenagers in the back. Plus, one of my daughters is traveling while pregnant. So. Anyway, you know: the recipe for how great relationships are born!<br />
<br />
What was I saying? Right: my son in law wondered who the acts at the Buddhafield Festival might be.<br />
<br />
Buddhafield Festival, for your information, is <i>not</i> a music festival, despite being within hurling distance of Glastonbury. No, according to its website, it <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">is “a joyful gathering of around 4,000 people, celebrating community and connection with the land. Song, dance, arts and crafts, yoga, live music, meditation, and play blend together without drink or drugs to create a loving and life-affirming space. There will be Buddhist teaching, workshops and ritual, under sun and stars.” Perhaps it was because we were packed into a nine passenger van, we noted with some smugness that the sun and stars were in rather short supply. Poor Buddhafield festival goers: instead of seeking enlightenment, they could have been like us, packed in a van, driving the hills, dales, and one-track country lanes of southwest England, wending their way toward Bath, with no realistic or reliable sense of when they might arrive. If ever. Talk about your nonattachment.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We did, finally, make it to Bath, which took us just six and a half hours as opposed to the three hours it was supposed to take. We fell into a Pret a Manger and ate all the food they had left, basically. Because our group is large, some of us drove in another car, so we reconnoitered outside the Pret, and readied ourselves to march on to the baths. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Two of my daughters, who had been in the other car, reported that their Sat Nav had taken them right into Glastonbury. ‘We were all, oh, hey! We’re in Glastonbury!’ said one of them. The other said, ‘We saw the Tor.’</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">OMG, the people: the Glastonbury Tor has been (laughably, probably, but shut up) marked on my Google Map of Dreams for ever. Why did OUR Sat Nav not take us through Glastonbury? Instead, when we passed it by at some distance, I said to anyone who cared (no one), ‘Glastonbury is over there,’ and gestured toward the West. ‘The Chalice Well is over there. The Glastonbury Tor is over there.’ Gesture toward the west.</span></span><br />
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‘Did you take a picture?’ I asked. Reader, I think you know that the answer was NO, they did not take a picture, and thus I found myself so annoyed/disappointed/in a fit of pique that I had to turn my back on the whole group for one entire minute.<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It was drizzly in Bath, as it had been drizzly all day. The youngest of us was four, the oldest of us seventy-five. Variables, thus, included attention span, predisposition to be interested in the distant past, basic heed to be paid to things like ‘don’t touch the water, it’s not treated’ (for your information, this heedfulness/heedlessness does not map easily onto the age/maturity spectrum of our group—we had a lot of rulebreakers), need to have a thing purchased at the gift shop, &c &c. Still, despite or maybe even because of our prolonged journey, most of us found the experience beautiful and edifying and, simply, a look into another entire world, which happens to be our world, too.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">The historian and I took a moment to think about our previous trip to Bath, twenty years ago, my memory of which is hazy: I remembered being down at the level of the baths, looking up, and seeing the line of sculpted figures, and beyond them, the medieval era buildings. I remember the sense of descending, physically descending, in time, to see how our world is built upon the past. I remember the way the water smelled—faintly metallic, steamy, earthly. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">To see it with these people. To see it now. To have the sense, in my body, that the life I am living now is built upon the past.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ntuU5dws-xW-zFz1E5UY4HPzr8TrcS9Gy-ysLO7aCDSDfLhLS0GjlzmUminPb1nGEoBfS4F_k5h2E6L8Vqs1FeublIkU8ZzAyCo-tBSe5rsAEY9qk4tvWdy7RDxp5DWlmXMl/s1600/8B5763D9-223E-4B5E-ADC0-E11D94A187DE.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ntuU5dws-xW-zFz1E5UY4HPzr8TrcS9Gy-ysLO7aCDSDfLhLS0GjlzmUminPb1nGEoBfS4F_k5h2E6L8Vqs1FeublIkU8ZzAyCo-tBSe5rsAEY9qk4tvWdy7RDxp5DWlmXMl/s320/8B5763D9-223E-4B5E-ADC0-E11D94A187DE.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rain on the water</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcheQO_epBBuIzbOH9KBp3_tinJNSHR2StZVG2bVyj8pDZ6YT_jHiGZ2RT71VW2e0XEd6qyLoXiCXXfqtD_GUI3i5XZDP6PBiV4GKpjHTD8RrhdAs2n_tXq12ikjiQXEs70wfU/s1600/EE8B6633-D0B2-4362-97B1-BA23C8B6EBB2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1439" data-original-width="1440" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcheQO_epBBuIzbOH9KBp3_tinJNSHR2StZVG2bVyj8pDZ6YT_jHiGZ2RT71VW2e0XEd6qyLoXiCXXfqtD_GUI3i5XZDP6PBiV4GKpjHTD8RrhdAs2n_tXq12ikjiQXEs70wfU/s320/EE8B6633-D0B2-4362-97B1-BA23C8B6EBB2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figures of three saints, but eerily echoing a Celtic form. </td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2rQj3wb2722Leww9n_oeRLXCU_p0gSIJw65FXOT_4-0GeVCPFM1fec0pcUnsl1oV5gNigtNldXkPU0AlrgNsghr5mdnoJqex4ZX8msBRAYY84JBxDYnu10KRtE8B1Vtzra8Hl/s1600/0E27DF7D-72FB-4541-8415-6D37C5AE10B0.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1133" data-original-width="1241" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2rQj3wb2722Leww9n_oeRLXCU_p0gSIJw65FXOT_4-0GeVCPFM1fec0pcUnsl1oV5gNigtNldXkPU0AlrgNsghr5mdnoJqex4ZX8msBRAYY84JBxDYnu10KRtE8B1Vtzra8Hl/s320/0E27DF7D-72FB-4541-8415-6D37C5AE10B0.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My women.</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">After a Pizza Express dinner, where our server was so witty, cheery, and attentive to our mad group that I felt he deserved, like, a Guggenheim grant or something for his hospitality, we clambered back into our respective cars and drove three more hours to our Travelodge rooms in St. Helens, where we all fell into our beds and slept as if we had journeyed for days, for miles and leagues and eras and millennia. </span></span></span>Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-53774557419396589242019-07-10T15:32:00.001-07:002019-07-11T00:55:35.988-07:00Patience is a virtue, just not one of mine.America, we are having the time of our lives on this trip. We had a close to perfect time in Ireland, although I admit that I have a few notes for a couple of the bed and breakfasts we stayed at, including this note: bed and breakfasts are just inherently kind of weird, a subject that I will perhaps engage at greater length at a later date, but for now, let me just say: coming into a stranger’s house, to sleep, and make/not make noise, and in general feel like an interloper, and they make you scones in the morning, and the eggs are just not quite right. But I digress.<br />
<br />
Our Ireland trip was so good, and then the time came for our beloveds to fly back to America. We all said our goodbyes in the airport, and then the historian and I flew to London and paid an extravagant amount of money for a taxi because ugh, HEAVY BAG, and found ourselves dropped at a hotel’s front door. Possibly a hotel. A very nice, handsome young man begged our patience while he took a guest’s bag up the stairs. (I had read about this in the reviews: no elevators. No big deal, I thought.) He returned to look up my name, and lo, it was not there.<br />
<br />
“May I see the booking number, please?” he said, respectfully.<br />
<br />
I showed it to him. “Oh, you’re staying at the <i>college</i>,” he said, “not here.”<br />
<br />
“Is that a hotel?” I asked, hopefully.<br />
<br />
“It is not a hotel,” he said, firmly. “But you’ll be all right.”<br />
<br />
We schlepped our bags (HEAVY) around the corner to the decidedly shabbier reception for the college. We retrieved our keys, then hauled the bags (&c) down the street a few more doors. “Georgian manors,” is a phrase the listing had said of the rooms. Well, maybe, but in fact what we had booked was a college dorm. A suite-ish, but still: college dorm-suite.<br />
<br />
Oh, the flurry of feelings then to be articulated and aired! How furious was I? So furious. How terrible was it? Pretty terrible. Sort of terrible. Well, not terrible, just not delightful.<br />
<br />
We poked around. The overhead light in the kitchen wouldn’t turn on. And although there was a washing machine—an amenity!—it would not work.<br />
<br />
I called the phone number, which the young woman at reception had helpfully provided, with the assurances that I could call day and night if there was anything that needed to be attended to. I reported the outages with crispness, and asperity. “I’ll leave a note for facilities and they’ll see to it tomorrow,” she said, somewhat languidly, I thought, given the state of things.<br />
<br />
We went out to get food. It was rather late, and we didn’t really have our bearings, since the address we thought we’d be staying at was actually halfway around the block, and who even KNOWS what north or south or east or west is, in London? Not a person who is staying in a college dorm, I can tell you that.<br />
<br />
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, hightouchmegastore, why didn’t you just find another room, at a better hotel? Well, here’s the thing: we had only three days and four nights in London. Would it have been worth it (and would it have been worth it after all?) to work on finding other accommodations, and trying to decide about pursuing a refund for a room I purchased with points through a rewards portal (is that even a real thing? It totally sounds scammy, when I write it that way)? Well, maybe it would have been. In the end, though, we decided, over freekeh salads (that *is* a thing, even though it sounds like fantasy world food) that we could at least give it a night and see. So we bought some yogurt and granola and strawberries and snacks at the Waitrose about seven minutes before it closed, and trekked back to our shabby digs, where we actually slept pretty well, and woke up to rooms that, though shabby, were light-filled, and decided we could make the best of it.<br />
<br />
The next morning, a facilities guy did in fact show up and fix the wonky light in the kitchen. He was not, however, a washing machine fixit guy, he informed us. “If they haven’t fixed it in a week, give ‘em another call,” he advised.<br />
<br />
I did not share with this handy person that we would likely never see the fruits of our having reported the non-functioning washing machine, since we’d be leaving sooner than a week. But I did share with the historian that I didn’t expect to see that washing machine working before we left. Once you’ve booked a college dorm room when you thought you were booking a hotel room, you lose confidence in the little graces.<br />
<br />
Do you think this is my story’s happy ending—my new equanimity-stroke-cynicism? Well, it’s not. I am at this point, on the one hand, full of adventure and a strong sense of competence for having organized so many logistics for this trip (despite having booked a college dorm as a hotel, I’ll think about that later), and I am interested in walking very fast everywhere I go. In a word, I am impatient, raring to go and don’t slow me down, please. Meanwhile, to prepare for this trip, the historian systematically took care of a billion things, like the bills that would need to be paid while we were gone, getting the yard and the house ready for us to be gone, and so many other things—so this morning, as we were getting ready to go, and we began talking about a money detail that necessitated, in his view, a call to our credit union back home, and I expressed myself in an impatient way that I regretted almost instantly, and said so. I felt anxious to make it right.<br />
<br />
A couple of hours or so later, when we had taken in the exhibit of Leonardo’s notebooks at the British Museum, I stood near a couple of giggly Italian women, and thought, <i>ugh move along, gigglers. </i>They were standing in front of one notebook folio, so close that no one else could even see the interpretive placard, just hogging the viewing space and giggling, and I admit it, I thought rude and uncharitable thoughts. I made what was probably an audible exasperated sound as I moved further along in the exhibit, where they weren’t taking up the space with their Italian giggling.<br />
<br />
The historian and I sat in the cafe after that, to catch our breath after the intense museum-ing, and to check in with each other about what to do next—more in the British Library, or move along to the British Museum?<br />
<br />
I recounted my exasperation with the gigglers. “They were just huddled so close to the glass, and you couldn’t even see the exhibit material. So rude! I thought to myself, <i>quit your effing giggling and let me see the Leonardo pages!” </i>I said to the historian . Then paused: “so <i>that’s</i> the person you’re married to.” (In the British Museum, there were <i>so many people, </i>so many that when I tried to navigate to the gallery with the thorn reliquary, then realized we were going the wrong direction, upon turning around as if a fish attempting to reverse course in a cascade of water, I said, in a cadence that escalated in volume, “This is UNACCEPTABLE.”<br />
<br />
[“What was it I said on the stairs in the British Museum today?” I asked the historian, as I was thinking about writing this post.<br />
<br />
“I think you said, ‘<i>this is effing UNACCEPTABLE,” </i>he offered.<br />
<br />
“I don’t think I said <i>effing</i>,” I said. Hoping that I hadn’t, because I knew that the volume alone had been pretty aggressive.<br />
<br />
This is who you’re married to, the historian. Seriously, I’m really so sorry.]<br />
<br />
In case you’re wondering, they did come and fix the washing machine—the very afternoon after I had expressed my grave doubts. And today, when we returned to our dorm, they had replaced <i>that</i> washing machine, which was actually working, with a brand new one, that created nothing short of a seismic event during the spin cycle. I’m still walking super fast and I will probably be patient when I’m dead. But it remains true that we are having a superb time, and the historian is really, truly, the best of men. Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-53822591950339731262019-06-29T03:57:00.001-07:002019-06-29T03:58:28.767-07:00In which I have left my hermitage and ventured back into the city.<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">On the day before the very last day of my retreat I had a bit of a panic. On the one hand, I had come through my usual summer dip, wherein I discover, in a blaze of insight, that all my work is crap, it’s probably always been crap, why do I even both when it’s all crap, and there’s literally NO HOPE OR EVIDENCE that it will ever be anything but crap—are you with me? I came through all that, and found new focus and a better frame for the work I had come, verily, to Ireland to do.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">On the other hand, I hadn’t done everything I thought I might do, i.e., write new poems, write revisions of all the old poems, finish all of it and have it ready, more or less, to win the universe. Did I really think I would do all that? No. But did I </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">sort of</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;"> really think I would? Yes. It’s my nature. I’m a maximalist. Why dream small when you can dream outlandish and impossible? is my motto and credo.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Also, the night before the day before my very last day, my sleep was interrupted by the long light, late and early, of my more northerly latitude. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Anyway, what all of this meant—having come through etc., my maximalism and shoot the moon disposition, my lack of sleep—was that I could barely figure out where to start on getting </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">anything</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;"> at all going. A revision, a new poem, a new mood, a new outfit—anything at all. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Late in the day, I went out for a walk, feeling rather out of sorts and possibly disgusted with myself. I ran into Will, one part of the dynamic couple that run <a href="http://www.themothmagazine.com/">The Moth</a> and its various enterprises. He was taking a look at the lush hedgerow bordering their homestead. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">“How’s it going?” he asked. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I offered an abbreviated version of the above. Possibly some of the out of sorts/disgusted with myself vapored off me.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">He said, “But you’ve gotten a lot done, haven’t you?” </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I assented, with a shrug. “Sure.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">“And you’ve got the whole year off, don’t you?” he pointed out, helpfully.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">And, reader, the sun burst through the clouds. Metaphorically, and literally. “True,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">“You’ll be fine,” said Will, with a small encouraging smile, and off I went, and when I came back, I wrote a big pile of notes for a new project, one that ties together an couple years old failed draft and its central gesture with a different subject matter, metaphors, and language, that works beautifully, I think I hope, with this current project. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">It was a gift beyond measure to be able to to spend that time alone, to have that emotional crater and rebound from it, to find my way to new language and new poems-in-progress, and to do strong revisions of a number of poems. To be with my own self as a writer, to give priority to that. And it was something, to do it in this exact place, far from my usual diversions and entertainments and self-soothing mechanisms—it wasn’t just conducive, it was constitutive. I walked to that ruined abbey and round tower a couple of times, and seeing the time-wrecked place, abandoned and also not, with graves there dated as recently as the 2010s, helped certain questions and lines of inquiry about faith and its forms take a different shape.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Oh, how glad and grateful I am for this.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The day before I left, it was beautiful, sunny and balmy. We sat together in the garden as the evening fell, talking and laughing, then went into the kitchen for a little more conversation when it got a bit too chilly. It was perfect, the kind of perfect where you know things are coming to an end, but fittingly, and with such a conversation as an unsought blessing. The next morning, the family drove me into Cavan town to catch my bus back to Dublin. On the way, we passed a fantastic building, with a great dome, very imposing. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cavan Cathedral, can you believe it??</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">“What’s </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: HelveticaNeue-BoldItalic; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">that</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">?” I asked, gesturing.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">“That’s the cathedral,” Will said. After a pause, “That’s where we were married.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">“<i>Really</i>.” I said. I mean, not that people </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">don’t</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;"> get married places like that, but REALLY.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">“All the Cavan celebrities get married there,” he said. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Previously, I had seen Cavan in a jet lagged blur, and then really only the Aldi, where I bought oatcakes and whatnot. Everywhere you go, the reminders of what you have and haven’t done. No visits to the Cavan town sights, no Cavan celebrity weddings. On the other hand:</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swan.</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Two and a half hours later, I disembarked and I dragged my giant bag (refrain of this entire adventure: I dragged my giant bag through the streets of [town]) from the Dublin bus station to my hotel—across the Liffey, down some blight-y streets, then into a lovely street where my hotel gleamed. Lo, my room was ready, so I could drop my [giant] bag and go out. I walked until my feet felt a bit the worse for wear. Then, I saw </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">Late Night</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;"> in the Irish cinema with a bag of popcorn and a diet 7Up, which felt approximately perfect after walking amidst the ruins and the swans and loughs and the wilds of my own emotional and imaginative life. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I walked back on my the-worse-for-wear feet and ate a perfectly delicious dinner in the hotel lounge, cod and mussels and a delicious herbal-tasting tomato broth and colcannon fritters, dang! So good. I watched the US v France Women’s World Cup match, an excellent match, it must be said (and I am delighted with the outcome). Then fell asleep, first drawing the curtains so that I wouldn’t be awakened in the night by city light.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Friends: today is the Pride parade in Dublin! A factor which I had not calculated into my plans, or in my hotel choice. It turns out that the parade route goes right by my hotel, and the parade ends with festival activities on Merrion Square and environs, also right by my hotel. This explains why I sent this text to my daughter in Scotland, who happens to be in the same time zone as I am: </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Two salient points: fam is arriving, and soon! And I have plenty of snacks nearby! Next phase of international adventure, IGNITE!</span></div>
Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-25423690420905471122019-06-22T14:16:00.002-07:002019-06-22T14:16:40.384-07:00A few remarks.It’s evening here, right about solstice time, and it is still just as light as it can be:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">circa 9 p.m., good grief<br />
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I am going to revise and/or make notes on a poem or two before I start reading and I hope fall asleep with relative ease and very few hiccups. Sleeping is, on this side of the Atlantic, not without its little ordeals. I’ve had a few blissful nights, but more where it was hard to fall asleep and then too easy to wake up too early. I’m still working with all the potential variables: drawing the shades for the windows, hitting the right mix of the hour when I lie down, what to read, how long to read, and what about a snack? And don’t forget to do the dishes! &c.<br />
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I have reached the following points in my retreat trajectory:<br />
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1. Get things organized and tidy. Articulate an agenda.<br />
2. Recognize that the agenda you have articulated is your placeholder agenda, are you kidding? Your real agenda has to emerge, from reading and writing &c &c.<br />
3. Recognize that the “manuscript” you thought you had is basically worthless and almost all the poems are dross.<br />
4. Recognize that you are a hack and everything is stupid and basically nothing you’ve ever done is any good.<br />
5. And that’s where we are, currently.<br />
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Dispassionately, I know that this is par for the course. I don’t even have to have a retreat in Ireland to experience this delightful sequence of events. I basically experience it every single summer, which I know, because I’ve reread the journal I keep of such things.<br />
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On the plus side, the hedgerows and gardens are filled with stuff like this:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pink.</td></tr>
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I made a note to myself yesterday to try to sink into this place a little more. I took a longish walk yesterday, then did the same walk today, but in reverse. The road, which is a big circle, is mostly narrow, so it means paying attention to cars approaching from both directions, on the side of the road I don’t expect, but who’s counting.<br />
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Last week, my daughter proposed that a bunch of us make Spotify playlists of our top ten (plus one, potentially a ‘guilty’ pleasure) songs of all time. The big bonus of this is several playlists that have given me an intense hit of the person who made it, and that has been a real pleasure to me. I listened to two of those playlists today. (Here’s mine, in case you want to <a href="https://open.spotify.com/user/hightouchmegastore/playlist/1m1YiktrnAlgAYvDVKsT3T?si=a0c671B_Rvqp3VGFNgHhuA">know</a>). Anyway, I took my walk on the narrow road whilst listening to music and simultaneously remaining alert for cars, and that kept me going, I’ll tell you what.<br />
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The chickens are in their coop, and a few minutes ago, a magpie strolled up, to troll them, I think.<br />
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If I were in America right now, I would be planning which movie to see and also probably planning some guacamole for dinner. I would also have full access to my sweaters. But I wouldn’t have access to the full and extravagant range of my emotional world, vis a vis being a writer, and all that that implies. So, you know. On balance, it’s good I’m here.<br />
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It really is, though. I wrote a draft of something that is currently pretty lousy but is on the trail of something I think is productive. It would be much harder for me to have done this at home—to get started down a new road, narrow and full of unexpected approaches, <i>because </i>I would have been planning that movie and guacamole and would have had a whole mad wardrobe of sweater choices to distract me.<br />
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Well, all right. The goings on around here are mostly related to (a) flowers, (b) fowl of the barnyard, water, and song varieties, (c) strange noises in the night, (d) donkeys, (e) light sobbing, or (f) snacking. In regards to all of these, This is, such as it is, my report.<br />
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Guacamole-less in Ireland,<br />
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HTMS at your service.<br />
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<br />Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-22903767330728684372019-06-20T08:33:00.000-07:002019-06-20T08:33:07.484-07:00Dispatches from my hermitage.1. <b><i>Toast is one of the best things</i></b> ever invented by whoever invented it. I have two kinds of bread here, because bread is ALSO one of the best things ever invented by whoever invented it, and there is a chic little turquoise colored toaster in the kitchen, which does a fine, fine job. So what I’m saying is, I have toast at least once a day and usually more than that, so my data is fresh, and here are my findings: toast is one of the best things ever invented. By whoever invented it.<br />
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Also, the Irish butter I have on hand is excellent.<br />
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2. <b><i>I am feeling it, the way my time</i></b> does not coincide with the time of most of my people. I wake up to a group text that has fifty-six updates. I text someone and know that they will not see it for half a day, never mind the fact that maybe I shouldn’t text them at all because what if they are a light sleeper? And have some sort of haptic buzz (pretty sure that’s not how haptics work) set for when a text comes in? And my silly and inconsequential text wakes them up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. or some other ungodly hour?<br />
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On the other hand, I am in the same time zone as Scotland daughter, which means that we can chat at will, and it is great. BUT: she has a job and so, boo, I guess I shouldn’t bother her while she’s at work, I GUESS.<br />
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3. <b><i>I am a discreet observer</i></b> of life at this little country homestead. Right now, for instance, I can hear children’s voices. The other day, the two mules who live here went galloping by one direction, then galloped back the other direction. Chickens have a whole conversation of their own.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFtRyZGtgeQ6tyIRpdRWG1mMjZYY7j0wln579Bhfjs-cXKLF_JNQQgIkO0Bb-tjNUkmwNqxCWYoLDM0MrjK8WpvRxF-_YXudH1vCnmobLGsR6jMhdCVzVXtuXYK-QCSROcjmZI/s1600/A4CD571E-8CA9-4C26-A728-BBD345B8B644.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFtRyZGtgeQ6tyIRpdRWG1mMjZYY7j0wln579Bhfjs-cXKLF_JNQQgIkO0Bb-tjNUkmwNqxCWYoLDM0MrjK8WpvRxF-_YXudH1vCnmobLGsR6jMhdCVzVXtuXYK-QCSROcjmZI/s320/A4CD571E-8CA9-4C26-A728-BBD345B8B644.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<br />
4. <b><i>I wrote a draft</i></b> of a poem today, who knows what to make of it? not me, certainly.<br />
<br />
5. <b><i>Reading</i></b> like mad. So far:<br />
<ul>
<li>Jericho Brown, <i>The Tradition</i></li>
<li>Khadijah Queen, <i>I’m So Fine</i></li>
<li>half of <i>Sycamore, </i>by Kathy Fagan</li>
<li>7/8 of <i>We Were Eight Years in Power</i> by Ta Nehisi Coates</li>
<li>Many articles in these old <i>New Yorker</i>s.</li>
<li>Have begun <i>Americanah</i> by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie</li>
</ul>
<div>
and possibly some other trash. Which I will keep to myself.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
6. <b><i>No television</i></b> feels weird. Okay, but weird. Keeping it very quiet here. Which means I can hear all of the lovely sounds—the songbirds, the dog colloquy, the mule gallop, tractors huffing on the road, and so forth. </div>
<div>
<br />
7. <b><i>Vegetarian sausage</i></b> almost always oversells itself, tragically.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
8. <b><i>I used to say</i></b>—I had this conversations with The Historian the other day—that in a democracy, it was one’s obligation to be an optimist. (And all that that implies—to do the work to bring a hopeful future into being—it’s not just the believing that will make it so.) Now, I’m thinking about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/opinion/hope-politics-2019.html">this</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/10/9/16430390/ta-nehisi-coates-podcast-hope-book">this</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/10/3/16409194/ta-nehisi-coates-stephen-colbert">this</a> as I’m working on a poem (different one than dispatch #4 above) which may or may not be too fragile a vessel for all that thought, but I’m not done with it yet. It may yet become sturdy enough.<br />
<br />
9. <b><i>Is it time</i></b> to go for a walk? I think it might be time to go for a walk. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-43032153067881895982019-06-17T10:09:00.000-07:002019-06-17T10:09:15.707-07:00Snacking & writing, writing & snacking.Friends, when you are in the wilderness, or, say, the countryside, you have to lay in provisions. You have to bring half your life as measured in a vast weight of paper. You have to bring a certain number of shirts, and a certain number of shoes. And other clothing too numerous to enumerate, as the packing adage goes (too many tee shirts = just enough tee shirts). AND you have to buy food for, let’s say, a week—and, in an unfortunate turn of affairs, you must do this provisioning when you fully in the throes of jet lag.<br />
<br />
Here are some things I bought at the Aldi in Cavan Town:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Fresh pasta</li>
<li>Two jars of jam</li>
<li>Two smallish loaves of bread</li>
<li>Basil, cilantro, mint</li>
<li>Salad leaves (as they call it over here—cress and other pungent flavors)</li>
<li>Two packages of fresh tomatoes</li>
<li>Asparagus, green beans, two long pointy red peppers, garlic, onions</li>
<li>Mushrooms</li>
<li>Packet of crisps</li>
<li>Two bars of chocolate</li>
<li>Two kinds of Irish cheese</li>
<li>Box of oat cakes</li>
<li>Milk</li>
<li>Extra nutty granola, luxury style (oh, the good granola over here! So good!)</li>
<li>Butter </li>
<li>Almond butter</li>
<li>Irish strawberries and blueberries and some bananas</li>
<li>Some smallish yellow-skinned potatoes</li>
</ul>
<div>
and probably a few other things I can’t remember at the moment. Oh!</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Vegetarian sausages</li>
<li>Greek yogurt, plain, two kinds</li>
</ul>
<div>
My hosts have provided me with eggs from their hens, who are, as we speak, roaming around the yard looking fairly smug. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And I am doing okay, food-wise, to be honest. Here is how my day goes:</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1. I get up. I make tea. I have a breakfast—yogurt and granola and fruit, plus toast with almond butter, or eggs and potatoes and toast. Either way: lovely. I love breakfast.</div>
<div>
2. I begin my work. Today, some writing I’ve been sort of plodding away at really kicked into gear, and I am feeling good about that. I’ve also been reading a bunch of things—books of poems I brought, plus there are lots of interesting books around here.</div>
<div>
3. I go for a walk at some point. Or yesterday, I went for a run. I used an app which meant that after each kilometer, my phone spoke to me. Fairly unnerving, I must say, the first time it happened. On the plus side, I actually ran four kilometers and that made me feel like a boss.</div>
<div>
4. I have a snack lunch.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
DIGRESSION: Snack lunch is amazing, and I am a big proponent of it. My snack lunches have so far consisted of:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Oat cakes</li>
<li>Some of my fine Irish cheese</li>
<li>A few tomatoes</li>
<li>Some Kalamata olives (add: Kalamata olives to the list of stuff I bought)</li>
<li>A cup of tea</li>
<li>Half a banana</li>
<li>Maybe instead of oat cakes, I have toast and almond butter. Or maybe I have both.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Whatever assortment of these things I eat, they are satisfying, and they make me feel right at home here and also like I am doing as the people do here, which, I have no idea if that’s really the case, I’m just an American, shutting herself up in a barn to write poems, not a cultural anthropologist with expertise in foodways. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I might also have a spoonful of that jam, in honor of The Historian, who loves a spoonful of jam or so. Frankly, I have a hard time keeping us in jam—I’ll bring home a couple of jars and maybe a week later, I’ll be looking for some jam to stir into a bowl of yogurt, and there is no jam to be found, and TH will just shrug and say, I finished that off years ago, and I’ll be all, damn, I have a hard time keeping us in jam, and that’s how the jam situation is chez us. DIGRESSION OUT.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Friends, I have two things to say: </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1. I’m pretty sure that my snack regimen is the reason I am having the good writing day I’m having. (Maybe another factor is the small nap I took, on account of the fact that for the second day in a row, I could not get to sleep until the light at yon window broke around 5 a.m., LORD. Also another factor: the year-old <i>New Yorker</i>s laying around here, in which there are all kinds of riches, who knew!? Maybe I should read the magazine when it is delivered to my own mailbox at home, but who has time for that in ordinary life? I traveled across an ocean and seven time zones to have time for reading the <i>New Yorker, </i>apparently.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
2. I’m a little worried about my oat cakes stores. I have eleven oat cakes left! That’s three snack lunches plus a more paltry snack lunch!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Obviously, I can find my way to a store to re-provision up. In which case, I might also find some cookies. There are no cookies in my house and I don’t know how I’m supposed to have writing breakthroughs without them, if you ask me. </div>
Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-9912191406900044822019-06-14T11:44:00.002-07:002019-06-14T12:45:42.313-07:00A new beginning, OR: a barn of one’s own.<span style="color: #073763; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b><i>Dear Reader</i></b></span>,<br />
<br />
It has been quite a long time. I know it: a very long time, really. Before I reckon with that, let me tell you about how I came to be in Ireland, at least this time, and why at this moment, I am looking out an upper window upon two donkeys having their way with a fruit tree, from the looks of it. And just out of the frame, somewhere, there are a flock of chickens.<br />
<br />
Last year, right about now, the NEH Summer Institute was just about to begin. Putting that Institute together had been a lot of work, and because there was a team doing the work, and because it had taken us three tries to get the grant, we were all feeling trepidatious, exhilarated, and exhausted. Then the Institute happened. It was four intense weeks of absolute and unadulterated presence. It turned out magnificently, kudos to my teammates who were absolutely epic in terms of their efforts and performance. I feel so proud to have played my part in this thing. HOWEVER: as it was getting underway, I had the prescience to say, first to myself, then to The Historian: “<i>Next summer,</i> I want to plan to be away for a good long while. Like, for weeks.”<br />
<br />
From there, the plan for this trip took shape. At first, I thought about a writing retreat, which would attach to a family trip, longer than our usual trips, so that we could do and see more. Then, I had the idea that we should invite our children to come. We had a lot of children, and so the upshot of inviting the children was that the trip began to have fold-out pages and pop-ups, and lots of ins and outs and what have yous.<br />
<br />
The constant was always: retreat first, then a family extravaganza. And that is where we are: the retreat first. I booked two weeks at this retreat, in a rural county, and built the trip around those dates.<br />
<br />
On Wednesday, The Historian drove me to the airport. This was after a lot of thought and preparation—never enough preparation, it seems to me—and a wonderful visit from my son and his family. Before we took off, I read some more chapters from the book I was reading my grandsons, and it felt to me like I was maybe leaving the fun behind. And I was—leaving some of the joy behind, anyway—but off I went, with my very heavy bag and another very heavy carry on. I did practice packing—what a fraught enterprise it is, to pack for weeks away! when clothes are a thing you love and when your basic aesthetic commitment is to more—and even that morning, with my daughter in law, I did some last minute editing and weighing of my bag. I had gone through piles and piles of drafts, ones that had comments from my writing group and notes from my own edits, and came up with about half a ream of paper that I thought hard about leaving behind—but I knew I would regret it if I got to the retreat, and I felt the need to see those ephemeral tracings. I carried so much with me, too much, and that’s just how I do things, I guess. I apologized for this to the taxi driver who picked me up in Dublin, and to the very nice man who, with his editor/publisher/writer wife, is my host, as he hoisted the bag into the back of his vehicle at the bus station closest to this place.<br />
<br />
On the flight—I flew first to Atlanta, then to Dublin—I did a crossword, then I watched episodes of <i>Schitt’s Creek</i>, then dozed through <i>You’ve Got Mail</i>, which I never get sick of (Meg Ryan wears the most lovely neutral clothes, specializing in various shades of grey—the shapes of them are somehow ageless), and which, for purposes of sleeping/not sleeping on an international flight, worked quite well. (Other virtues of <i>You’ve Got Mail</i>: a great small performance by the ineffable Dave Chappelle, and a perfect little performance by Parker Posey, and the sublime Jean Stapleton, too. It’s too long, but I kind of cherish all of it. Probably 88% of it, but that’s a good ratio for a comedy, in my opinion.)<br />
<br />
Note: my flight from SLC to Atlanta had far superior entertainment options than did the flight from Atlanta to Dublin. Why, Delta? Please explain your reasoning and email it to me at privileged-whining@ingratitude.com.<br />
<br />
Well, I arrived in Dublin, exchanged some dollars for Euros, got in said taxi with the nicest taxi driver, an elderly gentleman who was very chatty and with whom, for whatever reason, I was happy to chat right back. He drove me straight to my hotel, where I dropped my bags and went directly out to walk around town for a few hours. I wanted to go to the National Gallery, a museum that I missed the first time we came to Dublin because my daughter and I decided to go shopping instead. Two of the wings in the museum were closed for routine maintenance, but I saw a lovely exhibit of Irish printmaking, and I lingered in a fairly extensive set of galleries focused on European art from about 1300-1650. Lots of religious art, some classical art based on mythology and a fair number of courtly portraits. I saw a <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.ie/art-and-artists/highlights-collection/taking-christ-michelangelo-merisi-da-caravaggio">gorgeous Caravaggio</a>—maybe the first time I have spent any time with a painting by this artist. And a handful of paintings by artists from Moscow, most of whom were unnamed, including this fantastic painting of St. George slaying the dragon:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizew3fKmcCuyU0BKNwCwJby31U0nTsDIBnZqhITtBWX-3C5NKoceufWdI2iqEsjNgBJxPu_4xIdNGZUvcEjwb2nT4p3PP2nclVxL9FPoPGLAarxyoz-A0cUxO2grhmBK81x2kZ/s1600/678CC904-F73B-4D2E-BCD9-3FF41E7A74A6.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizew3fKmcCuyU0BKNwCwJby31U0nTsDIBnZqhITtBWX-3C5NKoceufWdI2iqEsjNgBJxPu_4xIdNGZUvcEjwb2nT4p3PP2nclVxL9FPoPGLAarxyoz-A0cUxO2grhmBK81x2kZ/s320/678CC904-F73B-4D2E-BCD9-3FF41E7A74A6.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Good Lord, I love this. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I walked around carrying nothing but a tiny pouch, containing nothing but my ID, some money, my phone, and a pen. I felt thrillingly light and spaced out with exhaustion, a little. It was cool—chilly, even—and I was glad for the sweater that I had brought on the plane and not worn. I ate lunch in the museum cafe, a thing the historian and I love to do wherever and whatever the museum. I bought a sketchbook with all gray pages, and teensy pencil sharpener. I considered a dress at COS, but left it there (then went back this morning and bought it, because it was fantastic). I heard all the voices that make up cosmopolitan, contemporary Dublin, a chorus of them in the flurries of people—tourists, workers, students, teens, older people like me.<br />
<br />
Then I went back to my hotel, got the key to my room, and hauled my stupid bag full of the weight of my necessities into it, and took off my shoes and fell asleep, blissfully asleep, for a couple of hours. Those hours saved me. I went out to find food, ate some passable fish tacos. I texted the historian:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXgudK_egpuv77aAPL46T0rApUPHtmQJrQNn1hX_z35nk47HtxpCICqPnH5s3_xHPwrUBythPanHO4lP2X1oFJEbSJTabo3bwaQ9VvXminhVhQI7FtgRxhxJDo-WAoRaPS-IHT/s1600/3F84361A-C1FD-4A06-A54D-2B0F25848F8E.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="1600" height="77" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXgudK_egpuv77aAPL46T0rApUPHtmQJrQNn1hX_z35nk47HtxpCICqPnH5s3_xHPwrUBythPanHO4lP2X1oFJEbSJTabo3bwaQ9VvXminhVhQI7FtgRxhxJDo-WAoRaPS-IHT/s400/3F84361A-C1FD-4A06-A54D-2B0F25848F8E.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So glad The Historian has a cell phone now, so I can text him.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I felt underprepared and also victorious as I fell asleep again, at eleven, then woke at 4 in the morning—still dark outside, but with just a margin of morning showing. I rested, finished a crossword, read half of Jericho Brown’s <i>The Tradition. </i>Then I got up, went to breakfast, and read the rest of the book, taking notes and in general getting ready to write.<br />
<br />
It felt good to realize: I got here on my own, making my way through Dublin with a fairly true memory of places I had been before. It felt familiar.<br />
<br />
I bought my bus ticket to this rural county online.In thinking about how to manage getting to the station, I had previously thought I would get a cab, just to be on the safe side. That heavy bag, you know, dragging it around for the whole world to see, down Dublin streets. I tried to imagine how would that feel? But in the end, I walked it, dragging the bag the 1.2 kilometers, no big deal, and my sense of competence—amazing how it takes so little to make that come into focus—is currently at a pretty healthy level.<br />
<br />
And that’s good, because the writing I have mapped out for myself feels ambitious and bigger than my abilities, which is all I want. That’s why I’m here, to find my way into that writing, and to put my hands, metaphorically speaking, on the means to do it. There are birds making their diverse music outside, and roses blooming, and it rained like mad as I arrived. The house I’m staying in is a converted barn and the light is beautiful—it’s almost-summer light, streaming in from all directions. Friends: wish me luck.Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-21902421273927500872018-09-20T09:53:00.003-07:002018-09-20T10:12:25.034-07:00MOOD.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><i>Dear The State,</i></b></span><br />
<br />
Last night, as I was reviewing the Utah Driver Handbook, once between my last student consultation and my evening workout, and once after my evening workout, I came across questions like these:<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
and I tell you, I felt a little panicky. I have been driving since I was seventeen, and I mostly think I know the rules of the road, and drive safely, generally, etcetera and so on and what have you. But I began to feel a sense of foreboding as I contemplated my appointment at the Driver License Castle upon the morrow, when I would be forced to confront<br />
<br />
1. my deep recalcitrance in letting my driver's license expire for twenty days. Twenty!<br />
2. the State's deep and abiding disapproval of same<br />
3. my knowledge or probably my <i>lack of knowledge!</i> of the laws and regulations governing the privilege of driving<br />
4. my tired and aged eyes<br />
5. an unreadable driving skills test evaluator who would probably be wearing mirrored sunglasses and would not crack a smile<br />
<br />
AND SO ON.<br />
<br />
Flash back two years, when I went into the Driver License Castle to renew my license and I was two years early! Ha ha! I misread the expiration year, although in my defense, the background they print the license on makes reading the details a wee bit tricky, and a six, under certain conditions of the lights, is only one curly line away from an eight. Well, that was a fine day, I can tell you what. Reprieve! Live it up! Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, and so on!<br />
<br />
Flash forward to this summer, when the renewal form came in the postal mail to my house, and I laughed bitterly, because I DID NOT HAVE TIME TO TAKE CARE OF MUNDANE BIZ LIKE DRIVER LICENSE RENEWAL, I said loudly and bitterly to whoever was listening (the historian, of course), and cast it aside in a devil-may-care/despairing fashion. "I will have to take care of that after the [swear word] NEH thing, and then the arrival of the family carnival, and then our trip to Santa Fe. AFTER THAT," I said, in a hopeful/hypothetical fashion.<br />
<br />
Well, America, I found that my birthday arrived in late August, and lo, upon that day, I said, with a start: "ACK my driver's license expires in, like, one day," as we were leaving for Idaho etcetera.<br />
<br />
And then it was September. > EXPIRED < and also the semester and every other [swear word] thing.<br />
<br />
So, okay, I ransacked all the stacks of papers in the whole universe, aka my house, and of course the renewal form was nowhere in sight, and nowhere to be found, and had indeed been taken into the void of papers, whence nothing returns. Or so I assume. So I made an appointment with the Driver License Robot, and gathered papers to prove I was a person and a citizen and legit on all accounts. I assumed, basically, that I would be required to prove myself from the ground up. Knowledge test, skills tests, general genuflection before the Driver License Castle Lords.<br />
<br />
So I walked in, with all my documents clutched in my hands, and my application form, and went to the first person, who took my picture. "You have an appointment! Awesome," she said. She gave me a ticket with a number on it, and said, "So just take a seat till they call this number." Which happened immediately: I looked up, and there was the number, no time to even take a seat.<br />
<br />
I advanced to the requisite station. "What are we doing today?" the Driver License Castle Lord said. He was wearing a polo shirt with the Driver License Division logo on it, standard Castle attire, I guess.<br />
<br />
"Renewal," I said, with my documents ready to proffer.<br />
<br />
"Look into the vision thingie," he said.<br />
<br />
I read two lines of letters perfectly.<br />
<br />
"You passed," he said.<br />
<br />
"Yippee!" I said, or something more appropriate with that same gist.<br />
<br />
"Sign this," he said. I read it. Basically, I was promising that I was actually the person I said I was. AM I? AM I THAT PERSON? Yes, I decided. I am. I signed.<br />
<br />
"That's $37," he said. And after I paid, he handed me a receipt, my old license with holes punched in it, and a print out of my temporary license. "Your plastic one will arrive in four to six weeks."<br />
<br />
"THAT'S IT?" I said.<br />
<br />
"Yup," he said.<br />
<br />
"You are lord of all you survey!!!!!!" I said, or words to that effect.<br />
<br />
And thus, my interpellation by you, The State, was concluded. My interpellation was, in fact, so delicate, that I went to Target to buy some celebratory mints, and also a new purse.<br />
<br />
I'm v. cheerful, in fact, and it's all due to you.<br />
<br />
Yippee!<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><i>htms </i></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(12, 52, 61);">p.s. on the other hand, this is apparently what you think I look like now:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(12, 52, 61);"><br /></span></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW7WNUlDLAcf9bH5nSf-gOn9RxO_QWjlHnDc4GhI8_MbDtgJx4OwgWl0MmyqhmlOKsM4Iz1sRI4PmUOmpBiTP-LOpruc7OSfHKWlItpD7ZOaaFhrpsp37pm75QM6hZujpkVJ-p/s1600/IMG_2182.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1576" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW7WNUlDLAcf9bH5nSf-gOn9RxO_QWjlHnDc4GhI8_MbDtgJx4OwgWl0MmyqhmlOKsM4Iz1sRI4PmUOmpBiTP-LOpruc7OSfHKWlItpD7ZOaaFhrpsp37pm75QM6hZujpkVJ-p/s200/IMG_2182.JPG" width="196" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">yikes.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(12, 52, 61);"><br /></span></span>Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-30038010969385087902018-08-22T10:37:00.001-07:002018-08-22T10:38:17.979-07:00Field Guide to a Figured World.<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="no" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/489128958&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Field Guide to a Figured World</b></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">The bridge is out, a woman tells me. I query: </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">did you walk across it anyway? No, she says,</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">she didn’t try it. The bridge is out, I’ve been told</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">this now for years, but still I’ve walked across it,</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">leaned, even, against its railings to look </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">into the water rushing down a decline, as all</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">rivers do, or they wouldn’t be rivers at all.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Looking at the barn swallows, hieing </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">themselves from the water into the cross-</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">currents, playing the drift, in what seems</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">from here, the bridge’s edge, a kind </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">of idling, purposeless, all their gleanings invisible. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">The air is thick with what they seek, and </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">the cloudy world of blue and mist and gathered</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">rain potent and withheld. I inspect the bridge,</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">its seven spans, with care, its closure announced </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">in definite terms: DANGER: but also provisional: </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">the sign’s enclosed in a plastic sleeve, like </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">an assignment turned in for grading, before paper </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">turned obsolete. They’ve propped cattle gates </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">across both ends, but left them slanting open. I read </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">the message as <i>DANGER, but not for you, </i></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>not really.</i> I take its invitation—the provision </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">signaling in two directions. I want to see the whole </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">panorama of the birds, flying up from under </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">the bridge’s beams in extravagant loops, wings </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">open to take the air, then tucked to glide </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">back under to their nests, the thunder </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">of the water over rocks as their contra basso, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">their chatter a countermelody, the wind moving </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">through grasses at the banks maybe the motif,</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">recurring, that holds the whole composition together?</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Anyway, that’s a little conceit I consider briefly, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">standing on the bridge that’s a ruin, or about to be, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">as the birds perform their aerial feats: </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I come to see it every year, I hold it sacred, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">though I know they soar and plummet for no one </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">but themselves, and certainly not for me. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">And really, the birds are almost beside the point, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">rather that I come to them every year, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">at home in this world, its grasses and snaking river </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">a garden out of which I grew, always knowing </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I could return, could watch for decades</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">as the bridge began to fall apart, and people</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">considered its repair, and the birds made</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">their nests and the water ever tore its passage </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">downhill, and made the banks yield to its fury. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Rocks, river, the wide sky and its rookery, its hawks </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">wheeling overhead: all this I have studied, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">with a little field guide fit to my hands, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">lenses trained to loop and soar in the patterns </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">of bird flight: and you, whom I have invited </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">to cross this possibly treacherous bridge with me, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">you might read that sign and believe it, believe </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">that the river I show you is not yours to cross, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">in fact you may not see yourself in it at all: for you, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">perhaps, the field appears nearly blank, does not </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">welcome you, its tract is not your book, its sphere </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">is not your ground. It should be no epiphany </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">to say so, I should have known it by now. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">My path to the river will not be yours, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">and your path to wherever you’re going, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">folded into the map you hold that I can’t see, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">will not be mine. And what of it? This bridge </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">is going to fail, and no tentative bravado of mine</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<br />
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">will stop that disaster from its event. Will it interest you </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">to know that today, I saw, fleetingly, a swallow, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">violet-green, and a tanager’s red neck? my missal </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">is a folded page, tucked into a pocket </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">next to a pen, for when the word occurs to me, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">set into flight by the downward swoop </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">of passerines. And yours? I am curious: </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">if I show you the figures the birds make of the air, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">tell you that I am of the people who build and then </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">neglect bridges, will you open your book, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">its alphabets inscribed both faint and bold, </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">interpret its languages, unfold it, show me</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">the print faded into the creases? Tell me</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">what birds, if birds, inscribe your skies? what </span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: avenir; font-size: 12px;">the grasses are, if grasses, that score your music?</span>Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-20939661439850715302018-06-07T21:44:00.003-07:002018-06-08T07:11:05.941-07:00Porous.A year ago or so, a woman I didn't know wrote to me to ask if I would be interested and willing to be the poet in a summer camp in a school district a couple of counties south of here. The Poet? "Sure!" I said.<br />
<br />
There were a bunch of things I did not factor in to that "Sure!" To wit:<br />
<ul>
<li>other, bigger grant I was also nominally a person of interest in/on/wherein/what have you. We hadn't yet been awarded this grant, but still.</li>
<li>there was big life-altering medical stuff happening in my family.</li>
<li>I had a book coming out--whatever that means.</li>
</ul>
<div>
The key here is, I <i>didn't</i> factor that stuff in. I just said <i>yes</i>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm sure you're ahead of me here, but a few weeks ago, I heard back from the woman. They got the grant. Was I, perchance, still available? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's the part where I talk about my conception of time:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Time is infinitely subdividable into increments which can contain, potentially and approximately, three times the amount of stuff you think you can get done, and actually, twice the amount of stuff you can get done, if you don't mind a little bit of sloppiness and stress-induced forgetfulness and if sleep doesn't actually matter to you whatsoever.</blockquote>
<div>
I realize that this sounds like I'm saying that, through application of this theory of time, I get twice as much done as other people. But what I'm actually saying is, the sloppiness, forgetfulness, and sleep-deprivation you see me exhibit is the side-effect of a conception of time that is, quite frankly, inadvisable. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Flash forward to this week, when I drove to points south each day, Monday through Thursday, for a morning with young people--first through twelfth graders--to write poetry. I said to one of my colleagues, "I've had the drive south and back again every day this week to consider my sins." We laughed, ha ha ha, because clearly what I meant was, <i>don't ever do that again</i>, LISA. But if that's the lesson that life was dealing out to me, via a lengthy drive forth and back each day, pray tell why I found myself feeling bereft today, when I realized I would not be working with these kids again? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Today, everything went pretty well. The little girl, probably a first grader, who wanted nothing to do with poetry writing, was happy to dictate to me, so I could transcribe, an acrostic based on her own name.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"What's an H word?" I asked. "<i>Huh huh huh</i>?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Honey!" she said, while playing with three rather hazardous looking unbent paper clips, which she was imagining as characters.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I have two names, Josh and Joshua," another little one told me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Which name do you like better?" I asked him.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Josh," he said, with a tiny smile.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Before the various rotations of the summer camp started today, I arrived to see a part of circle time. This camp is located in a community with strong Native heritage, so upon arrival, the kids all took part in hoop dancing, or grass dancing, or fancy dancing, or jingle dancing. The littlest ones were the happiest to explain these various dances to me, showing me a little bit of their footwork and the positions in which they held their arms.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"You also keep nodding your head," one boy told another boy, who was showing me how you tapped your feet for the grass dance. They all nodded their heads.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Today, the woman in charge was showing the children how to put up a girl's hair in a traditional Navajo bun. One girl knelt while another girl and a boy helped the woman bind the hair with a tie, then secure it. The woman explained that putting the hair up was a way of showing respect for traditional ceremonies, such as dances, and that different tribes might have different traditions, for both men and women. I watched as the bigger kids paid attention, their little brothers and sisters sitting on them, or near them. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was watching--lucky enough to take part, even--in the intimate work of binding together a community.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The woman, when she first asked me to be a part of the summer camp, had told me that the curriculum had a strong Native American emphasis. But clearly, I didn't have any idea, really, what this meant, and for whom. And only by being there, by figuring out how to engage these kids in processes of writing, could I begin to understand. That, of course, is why I felt so bereft when I left today.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I told my colleagues about all this unexpected emotion at the meeting to which I raced after leaving the summer camp poets behind. It was, of course, a meeting for the bigger grant, which kicks into motion in T minus nine days. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"One of the little boys [it was Josh, with the little smile] saw me in the gym as I was leaving. He had a little cookie in his hand. He said, 'I guess I'll see you tomorrow.' But he won't see me tomorrow." </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And then I cried into a Del Taco napkin, because even when time is infinitely subdividable, you still need lunch. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said from behind the napkin.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My friend and colleague said, "Well, sometimes you just have to cry." She has said this to me before, and she's right. Otherwise, you just try hard not to feel things. And in the end, I'd rather feel things, to say <i>yes, </i>and to make sure that I show up at the powwow at the end of the month--"bring a lawn chair and a sun umbrella!" says the woman in charge--so I can see the kids' fancy dancing, help showcase their writing, and remember their names.</div>
Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-42993586614974873652018-06-03T22:00:00.000-07:002018-06-04T01:11:39.511-07:00When the archaeological dig is of your own stuff. (a memoir)<i>As I considered the ivy growing into my study</i><br />
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>As I swept the floor under my easy chair</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>As the historian and I moved the easy chair downstairs, so that I could clean under and around it and maybe get a slightly sleeker chair</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>As I threw away a dozen old copies of the New York Times Style Magazine</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>As I rolled up an old rug so that I could clean under it</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>As I burst into tears</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>As the historian told me the reason I have so much stuff is because of a whole bunch of things that are right with me and not because I'm a horrible person</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
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*</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Lord, there are so many ways to begin this post.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Earlier this week, I sent my daughter this text:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2SW8CyrAqIk9JbXwC5IxWqXsMVtdrvvxIRwDnFOR2lzJhHEMB0jKVTM0wZLP0mahyphenhyphenEZMsM6T3newlTa3LEZP8HZtN8P7Ogcuv-LInc2vniwr1N3khybxjLbtLUYzwPvJWE-P/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-06-03+at+10.47.11+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="984" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy2SW8CyrAqIk9JbXwC5IxWqXsMVtdrvvxIRwDnFOR2lzJhHEMB0jKVTM0wZLP0mahyphenhyphenEZMsM6T3newlTa3LEZP8HZtN8P7Ogcuv-LInc2vniwr1N3khybxjLbtLUYzwPvJWE-P/s640/Screen+Shot+2018-06-03+at+10.47.11+PM.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">my rescuer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
America: it is time, apparently, to reckon with my life. And why not? Tomorrow, I start a Poet in the Schools gig down in Spanish Fork, and in two weeks the NEH Extravaganza starts for four weeks, so why not excavate and simultaneously judge my own chaos? Because it just can't freaking wait one minute longer, that's why. And because my study is, has been for awhile, and as God is my witness shall not be anymore starting. right. NOW, a nightmare.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"What a nightmare," I said, as we turned the giant chair on its side, the better to wiggle it through a doorway.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"No, it's not, sweetheart, don't say that," said the historian. He was probably hoping I wouldn't burst into tears. TOO LATE.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Actually, it's more of a description than a freakout," I said, calmly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And THEN I burst into tears.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But we moved that massive chair downstairs. I've thrown away some stuff, and put stuff into bags to give away, and there is still way more stuff to go through. But I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it because it is time to be able to work in my study without having to either (a) ignore what is plainly in front of me--piles and piles of little books I've made, books I've bought, papers I've sorted once and then left to drift into other papers until they've probably procreated; receipts, art supplies, little notebooks; sharpies, pens, pencils; flash drives of various sizes and eras; drafts of poems...the list is endless! or (b) feel I am drawing near to becoming a hoarder or Miss Havisham or both. And (c) I want--need!--to have a calm, peaceful place to work, for crying out loud.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am summoning up my most ruthless self, clearer of decks and restorer of order. I have been this person at times in my life, and I think I can become her again. Especially if my daughter is with me. She has offered me incomparable aid at various intervals. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I'm glad Sophie is going to help me," I told the historian. "She'll help me out, and all I have to do is let her make fun of me a little."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Once, she helped me clean out my kitchen. She held up a small pile of accoutrements (which shall remain unspecified and undescribed). I wilted.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"But [beloved person] gave those to me," I whispered.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Mom. Things are not people," she said firmly. And into the box they went.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Things are not people, America, and the things are damn well not staying in my study. </div>
Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-11901213787681399122018-06-01T21:43:00.000-07:002018-06-01T21:43:09.281-07:00Bulletins from the outposts of writing.Perhaps I haven't bumped into you lately, and so you have not heard me recite the saga of the Summer of 2018 and Its Epic Activities (most of the activities still to come--it's only June, yo). Oh boy can I regale you with this story, which has the following key plot points:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Summer has come, by which I mean 'the cessation of winter semester and the academic year,' and lo the Season of the Little Lows has crept upon us, even though it so creeps every damn year, and still it surprises me</li>
<li>My esteemed colleagues and I got a big ol' NEH grant, and lo in little more than two weeks, the two dozen participants in our Institute will be arriving in Salt Lake and whoa.</li>
<li>My roses are blooming their heads off!</li>
<li>I am going to learn SO MUCH from this NEH grant and all the things that will happen in the four weeks that our two dozen participants are here.</li>
<li>After the NEH extravaganza, there will be a family extravaganza, with children coming into town from far and wide and across an ocean!</li>
<li>Man, that NEH extravaganza seems massive. And awesome! (also: massive.)</li>
</ul>
<div>
I think academics have mythologies about the summer, which usually include stories of writing and research and progress on projects, etc. I know I do. I always imagine that there will be loads of writing in my summers, and this belief is both a promise and a little whip I flagellate myself with when it proves harder than I thought--again, happens every summer, and still it surprises me--both to set aside the time and to make the time pay.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All this is to say that this week, I found a way to lay hands upon three days without commitments, and thus I committed myself to write. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here how it went:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="giphy-embed" frameborder="0" height="306" src="https://giphy.com/embed/Qn7IK0NSb1BCg" width="480"></iframe><br />
<a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/internet-win-Qn7IK0NSb1BCg">via GIPHY</a><br />
<br />
To be more specific:<br />
<ul>
<li>On Monday: </li>
</ul>
<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjcAA2g_TvGDwcxM4bLSKSC-wGuBrvlqoq-OCbxkjGF8S2BOeA2ZAGBHi52CEEaA8DTLXEdaFHlSR6XPHOpvZFAd5bve9JZsM_y31mZcUOHY9ZvtNxV2_hLLIZIJNeTx-jAY8p/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-06-01+at+10.27.32+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="262" data-original-width="1030" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjcAA2g_TvGDwcxM4bLSKSC-wGuBrvlqoq-OCbxkjGF8S2BOeA2ZAGBHi52CEEaA8DTLXEdaFHlSR6XPHOpvZFAd5bve9JZsM_y31mZcUOHY9ZvtNxV2_hLLIZIJNeTx-jAY8p/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-06-01+at+10.27.32+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...which I did.</blockquote>
<ul>
</ul>
<div>
<ul>
<li>On Wednesday, I felt vaguely like I might be coming down with a cold, or, like a cold was on the doorstep, or maybe it was driving by the house. Yes: a drive-by cold that also was making me feel sad. Sad and tired. Making me feel like the best of mylife was over for me, and all the people I loved might love me back, but probably they had better things to do. Better things than, you know, being present at this very specific moment, making me feel less lonely. Also, I felt lonely. I sat at my laptop and wrote in a desultory fashion, some lines that had flowers and a balcony in them, and a pink house (the balcony was part of this pink house), the kind of crap writing that is basically just going through the motions. The poem I felt simultaneously calling to me, rather sternly, and simultaneously signaling that I probably wasn't up to writing it--the poem leered at me, and suggested that I was probably a failure, and without discipline, and a lazy writer, to boot. So I lay down in my bed and reread a novel I have read one billion times, then fell asleep. And then cried about it.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Oh boy.</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Today, I put on some smart-ish clothes and went out to the new Roasting Co. (verdict: nice new place, much less food, the new second story makes one long for the old second story), and wrote some notes toward the forbidding poem. </li>
</ul>
<div>
In between Wednesday and today, though, I went to therapy, which was useful. I have at this point in my writing life had loads and loads of experience with The Zero, which is what I call the feeling that I'm starting again from scratch, I know nothing, and various even more judgmental versions of these ideas. Judgmental of myself, of course. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What I know now is that I am currently gathering what I need to write this poem. I might be gathering for awhile longer. And this summer might not have all the space in the universe for writing in it, but writing will still be there when the various splendid, massive, challenging, unpredictable and superb projects and delights of the summer have passed. Writing will be there, and so will I, and I will have gathered more of what I need to write this poem, to imagine this next manuscript, and even to align my life so that future Lisa will have more time to write, to gather and to deploy, and time to lie down with her feeeeelings, too. Because writing, for me, calls for all of that. </div>
Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-57231909405911182972018-05-31T22:06:00.001-07:002018-05-31T22:06:19.901-07:00Swearing: a memoir.Well, let me first just say that I began cursing as a small child. There is a small legendary story told in my family, about a time when I drove to California with my grandparents (is that correct? I was too small for this to be an actual memory, just two. My mother was having or had just had my little brother, and we were moving, so yes, I think it was my grandparents). Anyway: they had bought me a little set of stuff to do in the car that somehow involved scissors. The little plastic kind. Maybe it was paper dolls, which used to come with handy scissors, because you had to cut stuff out. (Bless these modern times! in which things come pre-cut-out, and thus you can play with them straight out of the box, instead of having to excise them from their papery origins!)<br />
<br />
Cue a super-cute kid-swear: I am reported to have said, "These damn scissors simply won't cut!"<br />
<br />
It's a very short journey from this adorable cursing to using the f word, with which I got comfortable as a freshman at BYU.<br />
<blockquote style="background-color: #cccccc; border: 2px solid #666; padding: 10px;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
An interlude: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
BYU was a pretty weird place. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1. Evening prayer in the dorms. Every evening? Seems improbable, but I think it actually was? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
2. I think the girls at the end of my hall smoked dope on the regular. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
3. You could legit get a pizza delivered through your window, courtesy of The Rusty Nail, which was across the street and down the way. (Also: I knew someone who saw some Osmonds at the 7-Eleven just next door to said pizzeria.) </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
4. So. Much. Righteousness. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...which made a perfect petri dish for people like me to experiment with lite wickedness, such as swearing.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
At <a href="https://anncannon.blogspot.com/">Ann Cannon</a>'s book launch tonight, she read a column about finding a swear box underneath one of her sons' beds, with a detailed list of all the possible swears and what they were worth, in terms of a dollar penalty. It was filled with IOUs, which were eventually supposed to be paid up and donated to a worthy charity. Mostly, though, just IOUs.<br />
<br />
When we got home from this literary event, we picked up Game 1 of the NBA finals, Cavs v. Warriors--we got home just as the first half was ending. The second half started. Sometime early in the fourth quarter, a Cav who shall remain nameless missed a rebound he should have snagged and I swore up a blue streak.<br />
<br />
"Maybe I need a swear box," I said. The historian laughed.<br />
<br />
Well,<i> that's</i> probably never going to happen. However, I probably don't need to get exercised at an NBA game to the extent that a swear-dense utterance comes out of my mouth at an inconsequential missed rebound. (In my defense, the Cavs lost the game, and I am not [insert a density of swears] happy about it.)<br />
<br />
I'd like my swearing to be mostly recreational, if I have anything to say about it. Do I? Have anything to say about it? I suppose I do.<br />
<br />
I'm basically leaving the door open on whether I will reconsider my swearing ways, or whether--as with my erstwhile shopping moratorium or my desire/resolve to put away my clothes and/or not have more clothes than I can actually put away, let alone shoes, let <i>alone</i> books!--I will be a backslider and a fence sitter, etc., with regard to these and plenty of other self-improvements.<br />
<br />
However, after hearing Ann Cannon talk about how writing a newspaper column helped her pay attention to her life--and also that keeping a blog, however intermittent, and something like the same effect--I swear that I am going to really, really try to blog. Which is to say: write. The world cannot be worse with just a little more writing, paying attention to my life, and turning that attention into words. Some of which will be swear words, but not most.<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">for Ann Cannon</span></i></div>
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<br />Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-2241983798282198222018-04-13T21:30:00.004-07:002018-04-13T21:30:43.145-07:00On voice.Perhaps you haven't heard, but I have been going to see The Doctors as of late. It is my new hobby.<br />
<br />
Let me offer a brief history:<br />
<br />
1. I was born, and apparently a doctor was present.<br />
2. I had stitches when I was approximately four or five. Right by my eye, so that was scary, for everyone.<br />
3. I had multiple episodes of strep throat, throughout my childhood and adolescence. I believe that my identity as a poet was formed in the Fevers of Strep, wherein once I thought I saw a spider as big as my fist in my bedroom but was too weak to even call for my dad to come get it, for like, five whole minutes, and then I faintly, feebly called <i>Dad. DAD. </i> because literally it was as big as a truck. (See? hyperbole.)<br />
4. I gave birth to one two three four five children, with no anesthesia, except for childbirth the first when I had a local, because no one was going to stick a needle in MY backbone, no sirree (see also: <i>Our Bodies, Ourselves,</i> and other accounts of heroic going-without-anesthetic from history).<br />
5. I had no doctor for literally years.<br />
<br />
But then my dad had a stroke and then my sister had a stroke, and, come to think of it, my <i>MOM</i> had had a brain aneurysm/repair. So my <i>other</i> sister and I figured we needed to make sure our brains weren't busy cooking up additional strokes on our behalf. Obviously, we needed to get scanned.<br />
<br />
In my case, this meant finding a doctor first, so I could get a <i>referral</i> to get scanned.<br />
<br />
Let me offer a brief history:<br />
<br />
1. I asked my friends for doctor recommendations.<br />
2. I asked my daughter for doctor recommendations.<br />
3. I called doctors that had been recommended to me, and in short order, I had a doctor, and ergo, a doctor's appointment.<br />
4. Thus was borne my new hobby.<br />
<br />
<b>VISIT TO THE DOCTOR #1.</b><br />
<br />
<b>At the reception desk: </b>Please fill out these one billion forms and also please take this quiz about your state of mind. Are you sad? Are you ever anxious? Do you have trouble sleeping? Do you sometimes have trouble taking pleasure in normal things?<br />
<br />
Me: WHAT!? please.<br />
<br />
Me (in writing): I would be glad to <b>talk</b> about these things with the doctor.<br />
<br />
Me (in my mind): ...but I am NOT WRITING THIS DOWN, hell no, and you can't make me. (that last part I said out loud to the historian.)<br />
<br />
<b>In the room:</b><br />
<br />
Nurse: Here is your blood pressure, not bad. How's about a flu shot? Take off your clothes, so you can be defenseless and vulnerable, because that's how we like it.<br />
<br />
Me: (defenseless and vulnerable) (possibly doing a small amount of light crying) I hate this.<br />
<br />
The historian: I know. I know.<br />
<br />
<b>With the doctor:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Me: I haven't been to the doctor in nine billion years. I have a skeptical relationship with the medical industrial complex (actual thing I said, which I was pretty proud of at the time).<br />
<br />
Doctor: Sounds pretty reasonable to me.<br />
<br />
Okay, then, Medical Industrial Complex, we have a match.<br />
<br />
Doctor (palpating): hey, now, what's that nodule in your throat-stroke-thyroid region?<br />
<br />
Me: the hell you say?<br />
<br />
Doctor: how about we get that ultrasounded? Also, give me all of your blood.<br />
<br />
<b>VISIT TO THE DOCTOR #2.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>At the dermatologist. </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Dermatologist: </b>And now I will take a divot, I mean this mole, out of your back. Also, wear sunscreen unless it's a blizzard (actual thing the dermatologist said). Hey: benign!<br />
<br />
<b>REPORT FROM THE LABS (aka, my blood).</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Doctor on the phone. </b>You are not a diabetic. (confetti!)<br />
<br />
<b>AT THE RADIOLOGIST (brain scan).</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Technician: what music would you like to be played in earphones that you'll barely be able to hear over the sound of the universal gears grinding while we look at your brain?<br />
<br />
Me: Joni Mitchell, please.<br />
<br />
[machine grinds]<br />
<br />
Joni Mitchell: <i>love came to my door with a sleeping roll/ and a madman's soul</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<b>AT THE ULTRASOUND CLINIC (throat nodule investigation, part 2).</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Technician: lean back and expose your throat like a sacrificial victim.<br />
<br />
Me: uh, okay.<br />
<br />
(later)<br />
<br />
Technician: Yup, that's a nodule.<br />
<br />
<b>REPORT FROM THE RADIOLOGISTS.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
(a) you got no aneurysms in your brains. (confetti!)<br />
(b) yup, that's a nodule.<br />
<br />
Doctor: well, you can wait a year and get that nodule ultrasounded again. Or you can go to the endocrinologist and get a fine needle aspiration.<br />
<br />
Me: OH BOY THAT SOUNDS FUN<br />
<br />
Doctor: So we're agreed then.<br />
<br />
<b>AT THE ENDOCRINOLOGIST'S.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Endocrinologist: thyroid thyroid thyroid (points to diagram) thyroid cancer (points to thyroid model) thyroid cancer?<br />
<br />
Me: I can't hear one thing you're saying because the word <i>cancer</i> is somehow in usage in this room?<br />
<br />
Endocrinologist: So we're agreed then.<br />
<br />
Nurse: lean back and expose your throat like a sacrificial victim.<br />
<br />
Me: FINE (used to it by now)<br />
<br />
Endocrinologist: (sticks a needle in my nodule) Are you all right, ma'am?<br />
<br />
Me: Well, it's not exactly delightful, but I'm okay.<br />
<br />
(they spirit away some of my vital animal fluids and probably a little bit of my soul)<br />
<br />
Nurse/Endocrinologist: stay right here--we need to make sure we have enough of your vital animal fluids and we may need just a wee bit more soul-juice<br />
<br />
Me: (lays there like a sacrificial victim)<br />
<br />
Endocrinologist: I need to stick a needle in your throat a couple more times<br />
<br />
Me: ugh, fine.<br />
<br />
<b>REPORT FROM THE ENDOCRINOLOGIST.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Endocrinologist: Yup, cancer. You should get the left lobe of your thyroid removed within the next six months. Call my head and neck surgery guy.<br />
<br />
<b>AT THE HEAD AND NECK SURGEON'S.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Surgeon (who has a cold or something? so is wearing a mask, and is also carrying a huge knife(not really, just making that up. Hyperbole!)): I concur with your endocrinologist. Let's remove that left lobe within the next six months. Surgery surgery surgery. Also, the thyroid comes pretty close to your recurrent laryngeal nerve, so there's a chance, less than 1%, that we might damage that nerve, resulting in temporary or (very unlikely) loss of voice.<br />
<br />
Me: WHAT<br />
<br />
Surgeon: (who <b><i>knows</i></b> what he's doing/thinking behind that mask)<br />
<br />
Me: (actual thing I said): Well, I have a lovely singing voice, and I am a poet, and I need to be able to read and also to break into song at the least provocation.<br />
<br />
Surgeon: (thinks I am a loon, apparently, although who <i style="font-weight: bold;">knows</i> what he is doing/thinking behind that mask)<br />
<br />
Me: (settles down) Ugh, fine. Less than 1% chance, you say?<br />
<br />
Historian: (taking copious notes)<br />
<br />
Surgeon (swishes out of room in a lordly way with his cutlass)<br />
<br />
And thus, I will be having thyroid surgery on Monday. And I will be fine, and also my recurrent laryngeal nerve will be fine (less than 1% chance that it will not be fine). Statistically I will be fine.<br />
<br />
________________<br />
<br />
Today, after work, I went to KRCL and talked with Lara Jones about poetry. (It's National Poetry Month!)(In related news, I have been too busy/preoccupied to write a poem a day, which I wish were not the case, but bygones.)<br />
<br />
I have been thinking for the last year or so about voice, specifically my poetic, political, citizen's voice, and what I want to do with it. Ms. Jones asked me, after I had talked about a few poets who give me courage and make me want to write poems that might give other people courage, and beauty, and the will to act: <i>What about your own poetry? When you teach students about poetry, or read work in the community, or send it out, what do you hope will happen?</i><br />
<br />
It's a question I realize, at this late date, I don't have a final answer for. I am hoping that's a good thing. Not so long ago, if someone asked me <i>why poetry</i>? I would have answered, <i>because I can.</i> But now, my answer is different.<br />
<br />
This week, I read with Neeli Cherkovski, who said, among a bunch of other things, that <i>all poems are instruction.</i> The historian asked me if I thought that were true. Horace, the Roman poet, famously wrote in <i>Ars Poetica </i>that poems should both instruct and delight. I told the historian that I thought Cherkovski's claim might be true if you took a certain view of instruction--something like an Emersonian notion, that by reading or hearing poems, and thus experiencing the poems' ins and outs, turns, reversals, we are engaged in the forms of thought they embody. This, I guessed, would be a kind of instruction, I said.<br />
<br />
I want poems, which are an embodiment of my voice--not the only embodiment, but <i>one</i>--to make beauty, to enact thought, to take the mind and the ear and the body, to incite movement and strike fellow feeling. I don't think it's too much to ask of myself as a poet, to aim for all of that.<br />
<br />
I also don't think it's too much to ask of my surgeon, he of the head and neck and the fictive big knife, to be extra careful around that recurrent laryngeal nerve, because I need my voice, for itinerant singing, and because using it is one of the forms of my courage.Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-62165701654549588192018-04-07T23:07:00.001-07:002018-04-09T11:15:13.822-07:00Breaking it down, finally: the movies I saw in 2017<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">2017 was a hell of a year, America. I know you know this. There are a lot of movies I didn't see, and I'm a little sad about that, but in the end, I chose the movies, for the most part, that I thought would buoy me, one way or another. There were movies I didn't see that I thought might, in whatever moment, sink me. And so it turned out that there were a lot of weekends when we could have gone out but didn't. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anyway: not all of these movies are great movies, but I'll tell you the ones I loved and why. A star (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">★</span>) </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">means that this was a movie I thought was worthwhile. No stars means I have a thing or two to say about the film, but do not, for whatever reasons, recommend it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Hidden Figures</b>: It took us a minute to get to this film. Honestly, the deciding factor was how much both my parents loved it. So I went with that in mind--my father loved it for the science, my mother for the story. I loved it for both. This is not a great film, but it's a great story, and I loved seeing it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Paterson</b>: This film was like a long drink of cool water. It's a movie about a poet, beautifully played by Adam Driver, someone who writes and has a job and a marriage and an apartment and is a regular at a bar and so forth. The work that he does with words is a ground note that sounds through his days. I thought that this movie did the wonderful work of suggesting how writers think with words, phrases, sentences, line breaks, sound. A true beauty. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>20th Century Women</b>: I loved this movie. It broke my heart. It was a love letter to women of all ages, and I loved how it represented a big, messy, headstrong life--times three--from the point of view of a boy, a point of view which did not seek to dominate but to observe and to love. Beautiful.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Fences</b>: Glad to have seen this, in part to become more familiar with the play, which I imagined would be magnificent. I would have loved to see these performances on a stage. The film, however, was stagy. Splendidly acted but stagy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>The Founder</b>: I watched this on a plane, I believe coming back from Scotland. I can't vouch for that. However, I found it to be pretty fascinating and absorbing, an American story with all the dimensions of America that fascinate, appall, even sicken. And yet--not in the least a trudge to watch. A special valentine to Nick Offerman, who enlivens every role he takes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>The Big Sick</b>: My memory is that this film got a lot of love just in advance of its release, then people wanted to pick at it a little. But it's a good film. It's funny and sweet, and one of the big pluses is Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as the parents--so soulful and beautiful. Loved this film.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Personal Shopper:</b> I loved this--a friend who's a film professor found this to be flawed, and sure, I agree, at least in theory. But I was mesmerized by it. It was creepy and beautiful and thrilling by turns. I loved its meditation on loss. Kristen Stewart is superb in it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Florida Project</b>: An indelible film. The little girl who plays Moonee, Brooklynn Price, the central figure of the film, is unforgettable as the full-of-play and mischief child, living in a rent-by-the-week motel with a mom who's scrambling to make a life for herself and her little girl. Scruffy and gritty, but nonetheless full of magic. I knew, I planned for, whatever form the heartbreak would take at the end of the film, but I was nonetheless unprepared for how it broke my heart. So, so good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Wonderstruck</b>: Another beautiful magic trick of a film, binding two time periods together through two gorgeous performances by children. One, Millicent Simmonds, is from Utah, and she is beautifully cinematic. This film could be seen and enjoyed in a multiplicity of ways by families, or by anyone, really. Worth seeking out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri</b>: I saw this film twice, once with the historian, once with the historian and my son. It has its pleasures, chief among them the three starring performances. I love Frances McDormand, and because she is formidable, it was easy for me to miss what was wrong with the film, including its troubling politics, and a casual racism that is flirted with, a sleight of hand that gets more difficult to ignore the longer you think about it. I love Sam Rockwell, too, but as, by now, many people have pointed out, you're expected to invest in the recuperation of his racist character, while simultaneously never being invited to care one whit about the characters he has damaged. It's a testament to how good he is that you might not notice right away. This is a film that declined in value for me the further away I got from it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Lady Bird</b>: It is a perfect thing, this film. Like many comedies, people can pick away at it, but I found it beautifully constructed, with performances that were so dimensional and so subtle that I could take almost endless joy from it. The beauty of Saoirse Ronan and her entitled rage. The absolute splendor of the meaning Laurie Metcalf can wreak from the mere tilt of her head. Let us not forget Tracy Letts, who has given us joy in so many films this year. I know I will enjoy this film for years to come.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Wonder Woman</b>: Lucky me, that I got to see this film with my son. He had already seen it, but he knew that it wouldn't be the historian's thing, and that I would love it, so he invited me to come. I expected to enjoy it but did not expect to be so moved by it. Gal Gadot is truly remarkable, her beauty fiery and intelligent. I'm enjoying Chris Pine these days, too, in side-kicky roles, totally present and, it must be said, piercing blue eyes that, whatever, okay, they work for me. Anyway, this is a film that needed to be made and is gorgeous and worth every penny they need to pay GG for the sequel, since they clearly underpaid her for this film. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The Hero</b>: Sam Elliott is an icon, first of all. And this film gets at at least some of why this is the case. In terms of elegies to iconic actors of mostly western roles, I prefer him in the last couple of seasons of <i>Justified</i>, even though this film is certainly competent and affecting. If you love Sam Elliott, just watch <i>Justified. </i>And also, of course, <i>The Big Lebowski.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>I, Daniel Blake:</b> A fine piece of agit-prop from Ken Loach that I felt cleansed and scarified after watching. As argumentative and didactic as it is, it does a pretty good job of showing the logic of late capitalism as it plays out in people's lives. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Dolores</b>: Tremendously galvanizing and inspiring, and also frustrating and inspiring of a deep soul-search. How shall we live, when there is so much to do? Dolores Huerta made decisions that it would have been very hard for me to make, and it was hard for me not to feel judgmental about her decisions, but then I think: what about the work she did? Who would have done it, if it had not been for Dolores? It's entirely worthwhile to see the film to engage in this kind of questioning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Get Out</b>: One of my favorites of this past year--so sharp, so smart. So dread-inducing, so discomfort-provoking. It's a film so entirely relevant to this moment, and it might feel like an interrogation if it weren't so totally entertaining. Special props to Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener for being super creepy, and to Daniel Kaluuya for being perfect and for getting the (white) audience to identify with his character fully, and also feel implicated in what's happening. So good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>A Ghost Story</b>: This movie is a deep and unhurried meditation on loss. By 'unhurried,' I mean meditative but also, yes, slow. And Casey Affleck is wearing a sheet for 75% of the movie. With all of that, I still recommend it. I've never seen a single thing like it, and there are images and scenes from the film I'll never forget. It's a work of art, and it works at soul-level.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Beatriz at Dinner</b>: I saw this movie twice, and I found it riveting and heartbreaking. Salma Hayek has maybe never been better, in my opinion, and the ineffable John Lithgow was so perfect as the entitled tycoon/entrepreneur who was nonetheless a fairly compelling character. Connie Britton is also perfect as Hayek's client who thinks of herself as a good person, and who isn't exactly a bad person, but definitely a compromised person, albeit a person with absolutely gorgeous hair, which--let's be honest--is never not the case. I think this movie was flawed, but I think its flaws actually are part of why I liked it. It was one of my favorites of the year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The Beguiled</b>: Sofia Coppola, I love you and I will never ever not be grateful for <i>The Virgin Suicides </i>and<i> Lost in Translation </i>and even<i> Somewhere</i>. But you cannot make a movie set in the Civil War and not have it be at least a little bit about slavery, and if you try, it will be morally compromised. That's all I can tell you about this film. Anything else that is good about it--the cinematography, for instance, or the acting--is beside the point.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>The Lovers</b>: The wonderful Debra Winger and the excellent Tracy Letts (and the great Aiden Gillen and Melora Walters) all in a comedy, sort of, about love and letting go. All the things you could say--like about how a sex comedy with middle aged people is so refreshing, blah blah blah--are not really what's good about this. It's really just so good to see these splendid performers in a complex story. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Wind River:</b> Things about this are wrong, like, telling this story from the point of view of the white guy, even if the white guy is Jeremy Renner. But here's what I liked about this film: that it's a story about sexual violence that doesn't make it pretty. That it takes as its canvas the bleak Wyoming wilderness. And, aside from a couple of clunky parts, the writing is very good. I rank Taylor Sheridan's films (he's written a bunch, performed in some, and directed this movie) thusly: Screenplay for <i>Sicario </i>#1; screenplay for <i>Hell or High Water</i> #2; performance as Danny Boyd in <i>Veronica Mars, </i>the TV show, #3; director/writer of <i>Wind River</i> #4. I would say that the directing was better than the writing in <i>Wind River.</i> Anyway, I still am a fan of Taylor Sheridan. And if you haven't seen <i>Veronica Mars</i> the television show yet, for the love of everything good in this world, just watch it already.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Despicable Me 3</b>: perfectly fine and funny, especially with some kids, which is how we saw it. Also, I still get a little charge out of Steve Carrell doing this voice work. And I think minions are basically pretty funny. Sue me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Spider Man: Homecoming</b>: Saw this for the historian's son's birthday, with a whole theater full of friends and family, and it was a blast. I can remember approximately 3% of it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't wonderful. I'm sure it was.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>I Am Not Your Negro</b>: I had never heard Baldwin's voice, although of course I had read his writing, here and there. Not only an elegant writer but an elegant speaker, the anguish of his critique cries out. I was riveted by and grateful for this film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The Lego Batman Movie</b>: Luckily, I saw this movie with grandchildren. It was delightful. A highlight for me was Batman, in the Batcave, eating Lego lobster, which had a crunch redolent of Legos. Well done indeed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Chasing Trane</b>: A lovely film which also educated me about the deep and wide brilliance of John Coltrane. So glad to have seen this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Colossal</b>: I gave this a star because it was so strange but also sort of gripping. Another of the idiosyncratic great Anne Hathaway performances (I like her, but every once in awhile, she takes a great role that's way off her beaten path, and I like her even more). Also, I am a fan of movies where women have outsize powers that they have to come to grips with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Born in China</b>: One of those Disney 'see the world' movies that are totally worthwhile, especially if...say it with me now...you see it with grandchildren. This had pandas, snow leopards, and golden monkeys. I especially liked the snow leopards, but that was a pretty sad story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Snatched</b>: Amy Schumer, whom I love, and Goldie Hawn, whom I also love, a lot, in a movie that should have been better. Funny and touching and woman affirming, so good for them. Not as good as <i>Trainwreck, </i>which I basically think is a masterpiece. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Diary of a Wimpy Kid</b>: The Long Haul: Grandchildren. Cute and funny and passable. Alicia Silverstone as the mom--I'm glad she's still around.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Wakefield</b>: Bryan Cranston gives a full on whack performance in a movie that is not easy to like because his character is not easy to like. Worth it, I think, for the commitment he gives to it. And for the thought experiment--what would the life you live look like without you in it?--not a super comfortable thing to think about, which is not a bad thing to occasionally do with your movie-going dollar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>War for the Planet of the Apes</b>: Whoa, this movie felt like a slog. Thoroughly well done, but dark and long. Good performances by all the apes, and Woody Harrelson.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Logan Lucky</b>: One of the delights of the year. I love-love a heist movie, and this one felt pretty open-hearted. There's a sweetness to it. One of my favorite performances by Adam Driver as Channing Tatum's brother--Adam Driver had a terrific year, what with Kylo Ren and this, and his beautiful performance in <i>Paterson. </i>Kati Holmes is a riot as Channing Tatum's ex. And also: Channing Tatum. Very handsome and extra good in this role. I love the way, in nearly everything, he inhabits his own physical being.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Battle of the Sexes</b>: A perfectly enjoyable film, with great performances and a retelling of a great story. I was in high school when all these Bobby Riggs/Billie Jean King shenanigans were going on, and it felt pretty freaking meaningful then. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Loving Vincent</b>: A glory. The animation in this film was a moving painting, a mesmerizing work of art that also told a compelling story about Van Gogh. Entirely worthwhile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Blade Runner 2049</b>: Why was this film basically forgotten, except for technical stuff, at the end of the year? I thought it was magnificent, from top to bottom. The soundtrack was utterly original--the whole sound design, in fact. Well acted, melancholy and beautiful, and the special effects truly stunned me. There was a scene where the Ryan Gosling replicant character interacted with a hologram that was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Marshall</b>: This, the third of Chadwick Boseman's worthy biopics, was again interesting and he is something, totally charismatic and able to embody, it seems, just about anyone. So glad he is, I hope, going to be moving on into better and richer territory. However, I'm also glad for each of those stories about compelling American men, and I think he has tremendous gifts. Also, Josh Gad is no slouch as the lawyer Thurgood Marshall/Chadwick Boseman presses into service for the case.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Murder on the Orient Express</b>: Fun, but I also feel like the star of that movie was Kenneth Branagh's facial hair. It upstaged him and everyone else, including the storied train, at every turn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Coco</b>: What a gift. This vivid, full-hearted, beautiful film. My film professor friend says that this has nothing on <i>The Bread Winner,</i> which I did not see and which I regret not seeing. Even if she's right, that doesn't take away at all how beautiful and light on its feet and full of verve <i>Coco</i> is. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Disaster Artist</b>: I enjoyed this film quite a bit. What a strange and interesting story, and I loved, at the end of the film, when they showed, in split screen, the parts of <i>The Room</i> that <i>Disaster Artist </i>reenacted. No invented thing can be as strange as what actually happened.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>The Shape of Water</b>: I thought Sally Hawkins' performance in this film was utterly transfixing. She moved as if she were dancing, always and in wholly imaginative ways. She was the best of a lot of great things in this film, including Michael Shannon (my movie star boyfriend), Richard Jenkins, the lovely sets and designs, the monster, and--my second favorite thing in the film--Michael Stuhlbarg, who had a triple play of excellence this year, with this role, his role in <i>The Post</i>, and his performance as the father in <i>Call Me By Your Name. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Thor Ragnarok</b>: I can't tell you one thing about what <i>happens</i> in this movie, but (a) Chris Hemsworth is, don't kid yourself, super hunky; (b) Tessa Thompson as a valkyrie was just excellent; (c) Tom Hiddleston is always, always a pleasure, and very good as Loki; (d) Jeff Goldblum! I coveted every single thing about the way he was decked out for this film, including his superb eyeliner. There were some fights and Thor got pretty banged up. Also, no more fabulous hair. There will be a sequel. I saw this with my cousin and my aunt, we ate popcorn, we had a fine, fine time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>The Last Jedi</b>: Whooooboy, have I had some heated discussion that caught me unawares, with friends and acquaintances who hate this movie. Hard for me to figure out why. Clearly, I am not a purist and do not have the correct attitude about this whole <i>Star Wars</i> project. I won't get into it (for instance, I liked <i>The Phantom Menace</i> and loved <i>The Force Awakens</i>, which makes me a heretic and a dummy), but I really did love <i>The Last Jedi.</i> I thought it was visually gorgeous and engaging, with lots of good character work. (I am basically having an argument with the friends and acquaintances as I write these humble words--shut up, friends and acquaintances! I'm trying to write a capsule review of my opinion!) Anyway, I saw it with my two sons, who both liked it too. Strength in numbers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Movies I meant to see in 2017, but did not (the starred ones were 2017 movies I saw in 2018):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Brad’s Status</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Dunkirk</b>: Very glad I finally saw this film. I thought its concept--land, sea, air--was pretty brilliant in depicting the way the Dunkirk rescue went, and I liked very much that the film did not spend too much time, at least not over much, with a character, so that you used the character as your lens for seeing the conflict. It moved spatially, and used, I thought, sound very well indeed. I thought it was quite a wonderful film, very smart, and it felt quite original to me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Girls Trip</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Good Time</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Baby Driver</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Little Hours</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Logan</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Meyerowitz Stories</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Valerian</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Detroit</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★<b> </b></span><b>I, Tonya</b>: All about the performances, which are excellent to a person. Sebastian Stan, who played Harding's husband, and Paul Walter Hauser, the guy who moron-minded the knee-capping plan, were both quite amazing. I read a lot about this film, including a really wonderful profile of Harding in the <i>New York Times.</i> There's a critique about how it views class, and whether the film lets Harding off the hook. I thought the film was pretty fair-minded, and I thought it had a lot of insight about women, beauty, social class, and the idea of winning in America. I thought it was a worthwhile film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Pitch Perfect 3</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>The Post</b>: While I was watching this film, for the most part it felt pretty deft. And I was glad to see it, this film, right now, at this political moment. So I'm glad it got made. I'm also glad it didn't win any awards. It didn't need or really deserve to. It was enough that it got to make its statement and be in the mix of discussion. That's this film's real purpose, I think. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hostiles</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All the Money in the World</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Molly’s Game</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Phantom Thread</b>: Oh, the beauty and weirdness of this film. I loved the detail of it, the attention to the craft of design, dressmaking, and (of course!) its analogue in the work of filmmaking. What great performances, the three leads. What a beauty, an original. So idiosyncratic and so great.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Downsizing</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mudbound</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">T2</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Faces Places</b>: Agnes Varda, in her 80s, goes around France with photographer and muralist JR, a very young man, in his van/photobooth, taking massive photos of people who live in the small villages they visit. It is a meditation on art, on age, on loss. It was perfect and completely unique. I'm so glad I got to see this film in a theater.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">B.P.M.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">★ </span><b>Call Me By Your Name</b>: I feel like my experience of, and memory of, this film, lives in a protected corner somewhere in my heart. It gutted me and made me feel all the way alive. I wanted to see it again in a theater but didn't find the time. To me, it said everything about love and connection, about why it is precious even when it doesn't last. This film is radiant with beauty.</span><br />
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Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-51965341459902526642018-04-03T16:58:00.004-07:002018-04-03T17:36:01.705-07:00Designated Basketball Scholar.A few months ago, at a friend's birthday party, I had found myself a corner to sit in, which is my basic party philosophy: ensconce myself in a corner, preferably on a sofa, and let the party come to me. A couple of my basketball-knowing friends wound their way around to the Utah Jazz, conversation-wise, and said that there was basically no way they'd make the playoffs. This was well before the All-Star break, by the way, in case you're trying already to ascertain the probability that they were taking into account all the available evidence.<br />
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The hell you say, I said. It's too soon to say!<br />
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Nah, they said. Statistically possible, but highly improbable.<br />
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This made me huffy. However, it's also true that, as a basketball cognoscenti, I have limitations. Let's examine my basketball CV:<br />
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<ul>
<li>never played</li>
<li>have watched many basketball themed movies</li>
<li>love love LeBron James</li>
<li>started my fan career when I was at BYU during the Danny Ainge years</li>
<li>continued my fan career when Danny Ainge started to play for the Boston Celtics</li>
<li>took up my calling as a Utah Jazz fan during the latter part of the Adrian Dantley years</li>
<li>had my peak years as a Utah Jazz fan during the Karl Malone/John Stockton years, which, let's face it, were golden, golden years</li>
<li>nursed a deep and wide hatred of the L.A. Lakers</li>
<li>hoped like crazy that Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams would be the second coming of Malone/Stockton</li>
<li>a sketchy period when the historian watched all the games, and I listened to him watching them from the other room</li>
<li><span style="color: #999999;">now, when the Jazz are on the precipice of making the freaking playoffs, O Ye Of Little Faith</span></li>
</ul>
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(Basically, I whispered that last bullet, so as not to jinx their chances.)</div>
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I recounted this whole anecdote--where my friends were so certain the Jazz wouldn't make the playoffs--to my son, my youngest, today while we were visiting my folks down in Payson. </div>
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"Have you rubbed it in their faces?" he said. </div>
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"Not yet," I said. "I want to wait <i>just </i>a little<i> </i>longer." (So as not to jinx their chances, as you do.)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
"You should rub it in their faces. I would," he said, with finality.</div>
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<div>
My son is a scholar of NBA basketball. My Friends Of Little Faith, who had statistically improbabled the Utah Jazz's chances in the playoffs, include a person whose basketball CV is much more estimable than my own, but when the chips are down, I trust my son's read on NBA basketball overall more than just about anyone's. His scholarship is deep. I can never, literally never, forward him an article or a tip or a rumor that he is (a) not already aware of, and (b) verified or dismissed based on two or three additional sources. </div>
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<div>
Moreover, he is uncynical about basketball. For instance, he hopes, as do I, that LeBron stays in Cleveland despite all the rumors of possible destination teams, and thinks it's possible. I love that, even though there's probably no way to know this, he thinks it's possible, and thus I do too.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
"I don't believe in cynicism," I said, apropos of some of the cynics (of little faith) I know who follow and opine about basketball.</div>
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<div>
He laughed. "<a href="http://quotegeek.com/quotes-from-movies/ferris-buellers-day-off/227/">Isms, in my opinion, are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself.</a>"</div>
<div>
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<div>
Well, although I have many strong feelings about basketball in general, and the Utah Jazz in particular, and also LeBron James, I am perhaps a little less than sure of my own basketball bona fides. But I do believe in my son's. He is the philosopher king of basketball. Also, he won his NBA fantasy league. </div>
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Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-86291826855901470302017-12-30T19:26:00.004-08:002017-12-30T19:26:55.123-08:00Back to work, but not yet.It has been nine days since I last wrote an elected official, although it has been about ten minutes since I retweeted something political. About nine days, probably, since I last checked the learning management system for messages from students. Just one day, truthfully, since I received an email pertaining to next semester, but that same amount of time is how long I have been ignoring it. Both the email and next semester, also truthfully.<br />
<br />
During this holiday I have seen my family and gone to movies and out to dinner. I have admired the lights in my house and out on the streets. I have delivered baked goods and wrapped presents, tied ribbons around packages (and harvested the ribbon to hoard again at home). I have begun to make my plans for the new year, and I have hung up my clothes. This sounds ordinary but is actually momentous, as every time I hang up my clothes I reckon with the whole of my life.<br />
<br />
I have eaten a lot of peanut brittle.<br />
<br />
A friend recently wrote that she had waited 'till the last possible minute' to plan for her next semester's class. I thought, <i>this can't be the last possible minute, what about next week? </i>And resumed scrolling through Twitter with a piece of peanut brittle in hand and possible in my mouth. I am having just a little bit of a tricky time keeping track of the day of the week. The days feel a little slide-y.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">my calendar is currently wide open.</td></tr>
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The solstice has come and gone. Supposedly, each day has a little bit more light in it. Supposedly. For me, as I imagine for many of you, it still feels pretty dark.<br />
<br />
Well, I was out for the afternoon, and came back home. We'd planned to go to a movie, one of two movies that looked a little bit mainstream, a little bit heavy, possibly a little dark. I said to the historian, <i>Honestly, both of these movies feel a little bit heavy and a little bit dark. </i>I left out the part about <i>a little bit mainstream</i>, because I sometimes, even often, like a mainstream movie, especially during the last part of the year, and I don't want to cede the mainstream just yet.<br />
<br />
The historian agreed. Probably, mentally, he added <i>and a little bit mainstream</i> to the list of reasons why we should just go out to dinner, then come home. Currently, he is watching the Jazz eke out a possible, improbably victory (I hope!), and then we will watch some more of the end of <i>Veronica Mars</i>, second season, for the zillionth time, because even though <i>Veronica Mars</i> is a little bit mainstream, a little bit heavy, a little bit dark, somehow it comforts me in these dark times.<br />
<br />
However: in the new year, I plan to do the following things to jolt me out of my doom cocoon:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li> read books, as opposed to the infinitely charactered, herky jerky narrative that is Twitter. I have a list.</li>
<li>listen to new music every day.</li>
</ul>
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This is a very small excerpt of my new year plan. Some things you just need to keep to yourself for awhile. Possibly, we will watch the mainstream/heavy/dark films we skipped this weekend, just not right now. Just like, I will probably go into my office and fetch items that will help me come up with a plan for my next semester's class. Just not right now. And maybe not tomorrow either. When does next week start, even?</div>
Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-20216109288635205492017-11-20T11:13:00.002-08:002017-11-20T11:13:46.940-08:00Good things: a current list.(1) tiny little art piece by Naomi, posted in my office.<br />
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(2) progress on layout for the 2e SLCC Community Anthology.<br />
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(3) quiet weekend, mostly at home, getting stuff done.</div>
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(4) eating leftover sausage pizza in my office--getting a little hit of fennel.</div>
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(5) this <a href="https://smittenkitchen.com/2016/11/cheesecake-marbled-pumpkin-slab-pie/">pumpkin pie</a>, gussied up with secret additions and revisions. (pro tip: roast your own sugar pumpkin.)</div>
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(6) two GREAT films at the SLFS this weekend:</div>
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BbqMmebhtDI/" style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">Saw an incredible double feature at the Broadway yesterday and today, Sarah Sinwell-approved: Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck & Seth Baker’s The Florida Project. And now I will admonish you: see these movies while you can. So good. @saltlakefilmsoc</a></div>
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A post shared by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on <time datetime="2017-11-19T02:02:06+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Nov 18, 2017 at 6:02pm PST</time></div>
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(7) FYI, it is a holiday week, and I could not be happier.<br />
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(8) this apple I am currently eating.<br />
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[NOTE: a lot of my good things are food, and is there anything I need to investigate on that front? probably not. But to wit:]<br />
<br />
(9) a thing called '<a href="https://eatingatjoes.com/2013/12/12/trader-joes-sipping-chocolate-inspired-by-european-tradition/">sipping chocolate</a>' at Trader Joe's, which may be life-altering? it's seasonal, though, so you should (a) buy it now, and possibly (b) stock up?<br />
<br />
And now, I am diving back into InDesign, which, weirdly, has become a kind of homey place to hang out, what is wrong with me? NOTHING, that's what. I am just fine, and now I can apply paragraph styles to content I have put into pages I have applied master pages to, what is WRONG WITH ME.<br />
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Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-6241487566295255262017-11-03T18:51:00.000-07:002017-11-03T18:53:21.343-07:00Wall of Truth.This year is the year I have dubbed Mortality Lessons. I've joked that I think I'm ready to take the quiz now, I'm ready to stop immersive study practices and show I've learned the material, maybe even mastered it, I think I will ace it, enough already.<br />
<br />
However.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure that's how Mortality Lessons actually works.<br />
<br />
My sister E had not one, but two strokes this summer. She has been recovering ever since, doing all sorts of therapy, and making impressive strides. Her friends and family are ardent supporters. My sisters--there are three of us--were and are the squad (SQUAD!) for my dad as he has recovered from his own brain events.<br />
<br />
At the moment, though, E has to make getting better, recovering, her main focus. This is one of the statements on her Wall of Truth. The Wall of Truth is my younger sister's invention, and it is genius. These statements are written on pieces of white paper in Sharpie, and taped to the wall opposite the bed and chair. Other statements include the dates of her brain events; the location of her two daughters, and the fact that they are all right; and other pertinent facts about E's here and now, which can feel a little elusive sometimes. The Wall of Truth is supposed to help in making the here and now a little bit more stable. More confirmable. Look up, and there are the bare facts of the case, the incontrovertible, the inarguable.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Truth: the inarguable here and now are sometimes unbearable.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>Truth: the people who love us are infinitely precious.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>Truth: the burdens we bear cannot, for the most part, be made easier to bear through better thinking or better organizing. We just have to bear them.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Truth: still, sometimes we can use a little help.</i></blockquote>
Some of the sweetest conversations of my life I've had this year, with my mother, my father, my sisters, my brother. My therapist pointed out that one of the reasons the sweetness, and the grief, both feel so sharp is that these conversations--these circumstances--are sacred. That rang true to me. The sacredness--the way this year has felt set apart, a steep swerve into another realm--intensifies both the grief and the grace.<br />
<br />
Today I came home from a long but good day, feeling like I had done a pretty good job at all the job things that were on my agenda. I told the historian so, and he offered a kind word, affirming what I felt. It's my habit to simultaneously hold this kind of praise, and to demur.<br />
<br />
"Thanks for saying that," I said to him.<br />
<br />
"Well, it's true," he said. "Maybe <i>you</i> need a Wall of Truth."<br />
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<i>Truth: the end of the day Friday is the sweetest moment of the week.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Truth: I really, really love my family, all of them, in an infinity of times and places. There will never be enough words for this.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>Truth: there is also never enough time.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>Truth: I need to arrange to get a CT Angio, stat.</i></blockquote>
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<br />Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-6022308090834334822017-11-01T09:39:00.001-07:002017-11-01T09:39:16.950-07:00Dear Robert Mueller,<span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b><i>Dear Robert Mueller,</i></b></span><br />
<br />
I figure that, between your crack legal mind, your impeccable sense of timing and narrative drama, and your unimpeachable moral character, you might need to hear a story or two, so, because I have secretly or maybe not so secretly put you on a pedestal, nay, in a shrine, even though I know how problematic this all is, of COURSE I DO, I offer the following:<br />
<br />
(a)<br />
<br />
On Indictment Monday, I woke up, finally, from a not so great night of sleep, to my alarm going off at an indecent hour. Barely cracking open an eye, I reached for my phone to turn off the alarm, flicked to see my notifications, to find the one from the NYTimes:<br />
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"Manafort," I said to my husband, his sweet head still on the sweet, sweet pillow of early morning.<br />
<br />
(b)<br />
<br />
Last night, I had the strangest dream.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Last night, a night when the cable box inexplicably shone its blue light forEVer, even though I knew I had turned it off, and my mouth felt icky and also my shoulders hurt but I hoped maybe I would be able to go back to sleep and give it a rest already, but no: last night, after I woke up to stomp over to the freaking cable box and turn it off, and stomped out to the hall to see if we had turned down the heat, and we had, but why was it going, then? and why did my mouth feel so gross? and maybe I should just take some ibuprofen already: last night, after I finally fell asleep again after all the previous drama--are you with me, Robert? I know, that was some serious narrative circuitousness--I had this dream: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I was traveling, and it was complicated. (Maybe I couldn't choose between my <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/01/paul-manafort-trump-passports-russia">three U.S. passports with different numbers</a>--I think maybe that was it.) Anyway, while I was traveling, things turned into a plan to help America heal its political divides. The historian was with me, I think. Also some of my kids, and maybe a few other people. And also <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/10/29/john-boehner-trump-house-republican-party-retirement-profile-feature-215741">John Boehner</a>, with whom I was prosecuting a very intense argument. </blockquote>
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"You liberals don't have any respect for any conservatives," scoffed John Boehner. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This is patent nonsense. I derive from a family tree of conservatives, and I have maintained, lo unto this very dark hour, that there are still (a few) conservative public servants who are honorable people, or at least who strive to be honorable. (The evidence for this position being slimmer and less and less tenable as the years go by, I acknowledge, and with some sorrow.) </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"That's patent nonsense," I rejoined. "I drive from a family tree of conservatives. I respect John McCain, for instance, even though I disagree with him on most policy matters." </blockquote>
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"McCain!" scoffed John Boehner, implying in his scoffery that this is a too-easy answer, that everyone likes to say they respect John McCain. </blockquote>
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"Well, what about you, John Boehner?" I said. "Who on the left do <i>you</i> admire or respect?" </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This brought him up short. If he'd been on his game (although, to be fair, it <i>was</i> MY dream), he might have said <i>Joe Biden</i>, since it's clear that almost everyone likes Joe Biden, perhaps in excess of his pre-Obama record, but still. But he didn't. Instead, he reached into the pre-modern era. </blockquote>
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This is where my dream-memory gets sketchy. </blockquote>
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He named a founders-era person, and I said, <i>no, come on, John Boehner, it has to be someone closer to the present.</i> </blockquote>
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He paused again. "Grover Cleveland," he proffered.*</blockquote>
<br />
Robert Mueller, when I told this story to the historian this morning, he snort-laughed. I hope that you will be amused, although to be honest, I don't expect you to actually laugh. You're too serious for that kind of nonsense. And sir, I thank you for it. I thank you for your seriousness, and for all those indictments.<br />
<br />
Please carry on,<br />
<br />
<b><i><span style="color: #134f5c; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">htms</span></i></b><br />
<br />
*Grover Cleveland, you may or may not remember, <i>was</i> a Democrat, but obviously before the shift of the Democrats away from its southern constituency. So, John Boehner, Grover Cleveland is not an acceptable answer whatsoever.Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-35265266678022368992017-10-05T04:50:00.001-07:002017-10-05T04:53:12.216-07:00Away, and yet I am still my very own self, Episode Infinity.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am in a hotel in another city. Okay, D.C. It’s early, because even in another time zone in my own country, I’m a little bit thrown off. I heard what seemed like a knock at my door and I thought, <i>ack I’ve overslept,</i> which is a new “thing I’m doing,” I guess, part of the “everything has changed and probably for the worse” tour of my own life. But no, I had not overslept, there was no knock, it was still early. But, you know, the windows are light, or lightening, and so now I’m up in the gray quiet, alone.<br />
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What is there to do in a hotel room but take gratuitous selfies? Or blog, which maybe amounts to the same thing?<br />
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I told my friend that I would have a hotel room to myself:<br />
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I realized when I woke up that I had just spent the last 12 hours, almost, in the total quiet, my time belonging only to myself. And what did I do with this precious commodity, quiet and time alone? Well, I slept, of course. But also, I did much of what I always do—finding stuff on the internet. Answering email. Because I tried to leave town with lots of work already done, though, I didn’t find myself feeling torn by how much there was to do. When you’re in another city, a lot of what you usually have to do, you can’t do. My colleague and I ate a wonderful dinner before I encelled myself in my narrow chamber. Actually, it’s pretty swank. So, you know, monastic, but with really nice towels and a king size bed.<br />
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<br />Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-28431114458625422462017-10-03T14:14:00.003-07:002017-10-03T15:09:40.461-07:00Dear guy in the white Ford ahead of me at the Del Taco drive thru,<span style="color: #674ea7; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><i>Dear guy in the white Ford ahead of me at the Del Taco drive thru,</i></b></span><br />
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I've lately been having a talk with myself about anger. About rage, really. About grief and rage, which are twins, obverse and reverse of the same coin, aren't they? I could say that my grief/rage is national, but really, it's international and national and local and personal. Things are messed up. They are awry, askew, they are going sour and turning violent, and the losses--psychic, human, animal, civic--are at this point past counting.<br />
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Yes, I thought about all these things as I watched your broad backside, white Ford ahead of me in the Del Taco drive thru, brake lights aflare, as the driver--that's you, guy in the white Ford--leaned on an elbow out the window, apparently having a tete a tete with the person whose voice I could faintly hear through my own window, as I waited to order my two fish tacos and a Diet Coke.<br />
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Of course I was in a time crunch. Don't be ridiculous, of course I was.<br />
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What could you have been discussing? On NPR, they were discussing whether the Las Vegas shooter was somehow affiliated with the Islamic State, which the Islamic State claimed he was. Could he have acted on his own, and Islamic State still somehow claim it, in some legitimate sense? What is a legitimate claim from Islamic State, vis a vis this particular crime? &c &c &c, and the brake lights were still lit up and you, guy in the white Ford, still leaned out your window, and you were still, apparently, talking about something taco or burrito related? What could this be?<br />
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I admit I felt a tiny ignition of anger. I was under a time crunch, you see, a meeting that was to begin in fifteen minutes, and those fish tacos weren't going to eat themselves.<br />
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Finally, <i>finally</i>, you inched ahead in tiny, infinitesimal inches. And, following you, I crept forward to the drive thru kiosk to say, <i>Two fish tacos and a diet Coke, </i>and<i> Del Scorcho</i>. Because they always want to know if you want sauce, and Del Scorcho is what my son once ordered, ergo: Del Scorcho is my sauce.<br />
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I raced into my building, sack of tacos in one hand and the Diet Coke in the other. I managed one bite of one taco before I dashed to my meeting.<br />
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And now, having wolfed my tacos like a wolf, I'm thinking to myself: what <i>could</i> you have been discussing at the drive thru ordering kiosk, facing that tinny little speaker as if it were the person speaking through it? Was yours a terribly complicated order? Did you find yourself in need of a rundown of <i>all </i>the possible sauces? Were you ordering for a starving militia? Who are you, guy in the white Ford ahead of me in the Del Taco drive thru? And what hunger brought you to this drive thru, where you tarried, and, let's face it, kind of messed with my crack timing?<br />
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But that's okay, because I <i>don't </i>have a rage/grief problem, so we're cool,<br />
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<i>htms</i>Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-1662288122171104872017-10-02T09:28:00.003-07:002017-10-02T09:57:12.535-07:00Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Remember when we used to have Walkmans and listen to Prince while we took a giant walk around the perimeter of the neighborhood? Remember when, in childhood, we briefly had a cat? Remember when we had a tetherball court in our backyard, and we practiced and practiced so that we could beat Diane S., who was the best tetherball champion in the sixth grade? Remember when we had a yellow ten-speed, and rode it to the beach before the fog had burned off? Remember when we had delphinium, cosmos, asters, roses, baby's breath all blooming in our garden? Remember when we had a Great Dane that ate the tomatoes off the vine, and the peaches off the tree?<br />
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Remember when everyone had a blog?<br />
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Well, I remember all of this. Mostly because all of it happened to me, but you can substitute your own events, and you'll, all of a sudden, remember when you were younger, too. And when you blogged, maybe. Well, maybe you never blogged, but I did. I blogged a lot. There were a couple of years when I blogged almost every day.<br />
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A post shared by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on <time datetime="2017-10-01T00:31:26+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Sep 30, 2017 at 5:31pm PDT</time></div>
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I'm in my office, and I should do a little grading before 11 a.m., when I have a commitment. So I will, but before I do so, I want you to know that I have the following before me:<br />
<ul>
<li>a stack of bookmaking books.</li>
<li>a copy of Anne Carson's <i>NOX.</i></li>
<li>a copy of Ander Monson's <i>Letters to a Future Lover.</i></li>
<li>a certificate of tax exemption for the next time I buy a passel of fancy paper for the Publication Center.</li>
<li>My lunch. </li>
<li>a postcard of Hovenweep. </li>
<li>broadsides galore.</li>
<li>a copy of the Eduardo Corral itinerary.</li>
<li>a kaleidoscope.</li>
<li>an opalescent glass globe.</li>
<li>Dayanita Singh's <i>Museum Bhavan.</i></li>
<li>India ink.</li>
<li>a David Hockney print of his acrylic painting of Mulholland Drive.</li>
<li>a photo of the crowded Beijing Metro.</li>
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With everything happening in the world, I want to try--try--to keep choosing love, beauty, and joy, while <i>also </i>still flooding my congresspeople's offices with strongly worded faxes. I want to try.<br />
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A post shared by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on <time datetime="2017-10-02T02:53:42+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Oct 1, 2017 at 7:53pm PDT</time></div>
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<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44484/to-autumn">To Autumn</a>, worth reading every autumn.</div>
Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11240270.post-17390466991727452362017-07-06T09:49:00.000-07:002017-07-06T10:29:35.505-07:00Middle of the middle.Here we are, just past the Fourth of July, with its blaze and hot dogs, its smoke and ambivalence. At least that's how it was for me. Luckily, I got to see my dad during the day, and we--the historian and I--went downtown to see a movie in total spontaneity. Also, ate pizza. The fireworks in my neighborhood went on well after midnight. Bruiser is an old man now, and is not a fan of the neighborhood fireworks. We postponed our walk till we thought it was all over, but no: one family had their entire ranks huddled in the dark on their parking strip, and set off a few rockets in the street. Green and white sparks fountaining up. We were maybe a hundred yards away. Bruiser drew up short, and looked back at us, as if to say, <i>Really? REALLY?</i> And we were all, <i>I KNOW. </i>When the family saw us, they held up their next conflagration until we had passed. Which was nice of them.<br />
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In my current roster of democratic (small d) actions, I include the following:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Writing to my senators all the damn time.</li>
<li>Reading prescient and pertinent articles out loud to the historian, who is a mensch and a champ.</li>
<li>Taking small comfort in good things.</li>
<li>Despairing, and at some volume, and then rallying. </li>
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Small comforts: </div>
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<li>the historian was working at a coffee shop, and saw a guy wearing an ACLU tee shirt. The guy was teaching his daughter, about ten, to play chess. The guy told the historian that he'd got the shirt at some ACLU event. So, you know, fellow traveler. Comrade.</li>
<li>All those Secretaries of State, telling Kris Kobach <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/03/politics/kris-kobach-letter-voter-fraud-commission-information/index.html?sr=twpol070417kris-kobach-letter-voter-fraud-commission-information0913PMVODtopLink&linkId=39404223">to shove it</a>, one way or another. </li>
<li>Talking to my dad and mom so often, hearing their stories, observing their responses to challenges. </li>
<li>Listening to <a href="https://twitter.com/poetryfound/status/882626533982171136">an amazing podcast</a> yesterday, with Danez Smith and Franny Choi interviewing Eve Ewing. </li>
<li>Writing, at least a little bit, every day. Thinking about writing. </li>
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Eve Ewing talked in that podcast about 'desire-based narratives'--rather than writing about oppression and focusing only on what's terrible, thinking about, listening to, what the people involved want, what they long for. That seems small d democratic to me. An idea to conjure with.</div>
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It seems like our current predicament--what Danez Smith said called for them, all of us, to pack the apocalypse backpack every day (what's in yours?)--is going to last for awhile. I admit that I hoped that the appointment of a special prosecutor would be a hero on a horse situation, and even though I knew better, I hoped it would come quickly. But nope. (Or, in my favorite Twitter hashtag, which I think I personally devised, but maybe not: #NOPE.)<br />
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Anyway, the fire, and the fireworks, are ongoing, and we--I--must figure out not only how to endure, but how to engage, in a way that might possibly be productive. And that's how I'm spending my summer. Also: packing my apocalypse backpack. </div>
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Lisa B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/10646181766775405935noreply@blogger.com1