This will be a short post. The door is done! Done! (I ache to replace the hardware with silver but have no more oomph for that sort of insanity.)
For now, I’m back to my usual groove of teaching and writing. A new quarter begins this Monday and I am gearing up for a poetry workshop followed by my favorite retreat of the year.
The home improvement stores can rest easy once more.
From the blasted start to the blessed finish:
Before I lost my mind and started the project.
After the sanding.
Still waiting for the paint and inspiring me to write.
Still waiting for the paint and inspiring me to write.
How to get yourself to write in nine easy steps:
Tell yourself to take the week off.
Give yourself some terrible, awful, no good house chore that you think will be fun like painting your front door. (Simple laundry or bathroom cleaning chores won’t work. It must be something dreadful.)
Ask at least three cranky over-worked and underpaid home improvement store workers how to paint over a (maybe) oil-based stain.
Take the cranky advice and buy super toxic striper that has dire warnings on the can.
Follow all the advice about cleaning and wearing chemical proof gloves. (Here you will begin to wish you were writing already. I swear. It’s like magic.)
Attempt to strip the door. Despair quickly at the 2 hours it takes to remove stain from a 4 X 12 inch section.
Wait two days and try not to hate yourself for the terrible, awful, no good idea to paint that raser-fracking door with the impossible lion carving, of all the ridiculous things. You know you will never get that lion striped. Never. (Here you will sneak in some research and a coffee shop write. No joke.)
Whine to your sympathetic, wise, and not-at-all cranky mother.
Take her advice and do it ANOTHER WAY. While you are sanding those snarling lions, you will mentally compose a blog post about the whole adventure and look forward fondly to the time when you will go back to teaching and writing as usual.
In all honesty, those steps are about as easy as pulling your toenails off with the screwdrivers you used to loosen the second door. But they work.
Warning: This post has reptiles. If slithering snakes give you the heebie jeebies, you may want to skip this one.
For my birthday this year, I went to see the Reptile Zoo in Monroe, WA. From this trip with my husband and six-year-old, I managed to squeeze a poem.
I suppose I should start by saying that poetry has been haunting me lately. It started when my friend Lorie Ann Grover posted that she’d be teaching at a poetry camp in Bellingham this October. The idea of it intrigued me and reminded me that, once upon a time, I thought poetry would be my thing. I considered signing up and then poetry was suddenly everywhere.
When I went to Seattle, I even saw it on the side of a bus demanding that I “Write a Poem” in letters so bold and big I could not ignore them. I gave in to the universe and registered to go to that camp. (Apparently, poetry on buses is a thing. It even has it’s own website.)
Then a free online class popped up in one of my newsletters. I began the course with Douglas Kearney at the California Institute of the Arts.
In the third module, I came up against the assignment to write a conceit–a metaphor that makes the reader stretch into the ridiculous. An example of this is The Flea by John Donne where the poet compares a parasite to the marriage bed. It would embarrass me to explain the connection but here is a clear explanation of what that far-from-prude Donne was going on about.
I thought of how I would write my own conceit and what sort of ridiculous connection I could make of my own and decided to tie together reptiles with poems since they seem so far apart and since I knew I would make the trek to Monroe.
I let those ideas hang loose in my mind as we made the hour and a half drive from our home through some seriously traffic infested areas of our state. I don’t remember where but somewhere along the line, I came on the idea of skin shedding and writing a poem. By the time we got to the zoo, I was set to look for more information on snakes and how I could use them in my poem.
I’ve said it before but one of the best parts of the writing life is the way it brings meaning and focus to every moment of my life even when I am not sitting at the keyboard or with a pen in my hand.
After my field study (which my six-year-old enjoyed even more than I did), I researched snakes geeked out on how they shed their skin.
Pasted far below you can see what I came up with. It’s still a draft and it scares me to post it here. Poetry has a personal exposure for me that my prose does not. But I like those snakes and this particular exuviae enough to take the risk.
May you find your own conceits in the adventures of your day-
Last night, the director kept stopping us in that annoying way that band leaders have.
“We’ve got to get those triplets sharp. Some of you are thinking you can just slip through them at a relaxed pace and it’s throwing us off,” he said.
“I am not in a parade up here waving at you like a princess from a float.” Here he wiggled his fingers at us like he does when he needs the whole note people to shush so the melody people with their quieter instruments could get heard.
And then he would have us practice. Again. Start at measure forty seven. Again.
We didn’t always get it exactly right. But he made us repeat until it was at least better. After three or four or more times, we got a little more together or the parts balanced each other out. If we remember to do it that way on concert day, it will be a lovely small miracle.
The band isn’t the only place where we humans in community need to be in sync or to quiet down so others can be heard.
I just got off of teaching our last quarter this August 17th. This summer more than any before it, I felt the distinct pain of working through the time when other teachers are off. I have never had three whole months like many teachers get, but our college used to line up better with the K12 rhythm when we finished at the end of July.
I am not complaining, exactly. I adore my time off and there are even benefits to getting out so late. I will have time to help my kids get going in their own schools. I get to enjoy fall in ways that many others might not with day trips to the mountain while others are gearing up for their new school year.
But I feel apart. Separate. A little like I am playing triplets that don’t match the ones played in the next section. Or worse. Like that one instrument that comes in during the measure when the whole band has a rest.
This asynchronous rest of mine has taught me something. It matters when I am together with the group. There is a power in the rhythm of habits for writing and music practice that gets even stronger when others work along with me.
I am not going to whine about it (much more). Instead, I am going to remember that lesson the next time I am in charge of my own schedule.
May you find joy in the rhythms of your community-
P.S. We’ll be playing at the Showplace Stage near the Blue Gate on Thursday, September 8th and Monday, September 19th from 7:00-7:30 . Come by if you’d like to hear whether we remember what the director said.
We’ll play Hogan’s Heroes, The King and I, and the Pink Panther along with a few others.
Finally, for just a little extra, here’s one of my all time favorites on rhythm and what it’s like to align with an even greater song.
Like Her Hair's On Fire 