Confession Tuesday

Tuesday evening and I'm here for one reason.... Confession Tuesday.

Let's go to the Confessional.

Dear reader~  Where has the Summer gone? I must confess that the older I get the swifter our seasons seem to come and go.  Last weekend I was in a Target store and heard some teenager telling her mom that "xyz" store already had their Christmas displays going up. Really- before the end of August!!??

I suppose it is only natural that time seems to go faster as we get older. I think as we age and take on responsibilities we must think less about seasons or even months and more about paydays.  We seem to move between paydays swiftly. Like maybe we simply live for the next payday. At least that is what it seems like to me.

I confess I wish for some different benchmark to look forward to. I'm open to suggestions.

A Writers Cottage

It’s where quaint and secluded
merge back from the road,
nestled in the verdant treed lot
where even the postman
never comes. It is here

by the fire at night
I read what I wish
till my book falls helpless
into my lap
until supple rays find my face
while birds scold me awake

and with brawny coffee
I embark on the new day
with the purity of paper
void of anything
and my head chasing
transitory images
to pen down on the page.

 
 
© 2010 – Michael A. Wells
 
 
 A part of Magpie Tales 29

A Collision of Past and Future

I read Victoria Chang's second book before I read Circle which gave me reason for pleasant surprise. You could easily be fooled into believing this work is anything but a first book. There is cohesiveness in Circle that many poets have not mastered in their second or third publication.

In Circle Chang embraces an exposition of culture and gender in ways that are not worn or over worked. She demonstrates the spiral collision of past and future. She is often edgy but her word skills have a well controlled precision that can slip a point past you like smooth butter.

I especially enjoyed the following poems: Lantern Festival, Seven Changs, To Want, Kitchen Aid Epicurean Stand Mixer and On Quitting.

Circle was a winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and was published by Southern Illinois University Press.

A Driveway Moment Missed

Just returned from a brisk evening walk with MO (pictured left), the weather is so nice, I hope tomorrow is a xerox copy.

 

Earlier today I had NPR on in the car listening to Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know? and he had as a guest Ayelet Waldman the author of Bad Mother.  It was one of those "driveway moments" or should have been as I had arrived at my destination and really wanted to hear the rest, but couldn't (I'll have to await podcast).  I haven't read her book but she was hysterical on the show.

 

Evidently she was at one tine a public defender and married to a writer she decided whe wantd to do what he does... write for four hours a day and well, do whatever the rest of the day. Of course in order to do that you have to become successful at writing, which evidently she has. Her 2005 New Yourk Times Essay about sex and motherhood opened a lot of eyes. The essay titled Truly, Madly, Guiltily can be read here.

A review of her book: BAD MOTHER A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace published by Doubleday can be found here.

Gag Me With A Spoon!

E-books purchased in Apple's iBookstore may soon include iAds. "If you flip to page forty of Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City, you may be served an iAd instead of page forty-one." (CNET)

Keep Language Alive!

"No doubt some languages have died, but we don't know which ones they were." - William Matthews

Confession Tuesday - you are what you read edition

Tuesday again… this time I’m prompt. I actually have to say I’ve thought a lot about this confession so let’s get started.




Dear reader:

 That sounds funny addressing you as reader when my confession today is about me as a reader. Yesterday I was reading something – I don’t recall what exactly when this came to me as I read a number of articles and blogs yesterday, but I thought back over my own reading past experiences and realized I have a problem.

 All right, I have a number of problems so don’t go there. The problem I’m confessing is my reading habits. If I were looking at what I read as a menu of food I eat, I would be totally deficient in some vitamins and minerals.

 My own book shelves basically can be divided into three sections - poetry/poetics, baseball, political - biographical. Actually I have a number of biographical that are linked to poetry as well.

I don’t as a rule read novels. Occasionally I’ve read a science fiction. When I was younger I read fiction and a fair amount of historical fiction but as I grew older most of my reading had a more direct purpose.

 I confess this is not a totally new revelation to me, but thinking at in the context of contributing to some kind of deficiency is quite frankly a new and startling insight or self discovery. And here is the rub… a part of me says at my age why care? If given the choice what to sit down and read this very afternoon I would likely not stray from the comfort of my well worn path. Yet, there is this part of me that says perhaps I could be a better, a stronger writer if I opened myself to broader tastes in reading. It’s a thought.

 I’ll let you know where this leads, if anywhere.

After Work

AFTER WORK

The ringing in my ear
the desk clutter—
post-its, a pile of unreturned
messages, half finished report,
the missing file that haunted me
all the way home—

the stop and go traffic on I-70,
sloshed latte in my lap,
the SUV on my ass,
news of floods, more IEDs,
unemployment, casualties,
mosque, no mosque—

all dispersed in a floral medley
of gentle bath bubbles and oils
nibbling my toes.


© 2010 – Michael A. Wells



Part of Magpie Tales 28

Saturday Seven Recommended Posts

I have planned for a good part of the day to stop and post today but one delay seemed to lead to another and here I am at 9:30 typing this.  My wife and I did  take time to watch a couple of movies.... Leap Year and The Invention of Lying. They were both enjoyable - not award winners but something to relax to and share time together.

Over the past few days I've seen some really good posts around the blog world and I thought I'd point out a few that I'd recommend.

• Poet Mom continued a conversation on underrated poets and asked for other suggestions.
• Kelly Wantuch provides an interesting take on photo art.
• Terresa Wellborn's powerful words in A Different Leaving.
• Just found this cool site thanks to The Chocolate Chip Waffle.
• Poem by Polly McCann ADD MOM
• Poet Trading Cards at Poets United
• Susan Rich's poem Mohamud at the Mosque

Happy reading~

Thursday Thought

The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating. - Jackson Pollock

Mid-day

Window view distracts
Progress on work seems jerky
Rather be outside

Confession Tuesday - better late then never edition...

Dear Reader- I was asleep at the switch. Tuesday came and went and I confess I did not once think about confession. Perhaps it’s because there seemed nothing nagging at my mind. Even now, it seems my confession omission is the most exciting thing to report.


Ah, but there is something people who know me would be surprised to know. The past two days I have actually pulled for the Chicago Cubs to win games. Not of course every game, or just any game, but specifically those in their series against the Padres. This I confess is revenge and preservation. The revenge is for the Padres taking 2 games of a 3 game series against the San Francisco Giants, and preservation for assuring the tightness of the division race in the NL west. This should surprise you because the Cubs are one of a few teams I normally always would root against. I don’t go as far as making voodoo team dolls and trying to render certain teams lame… If they are lame, they are just lame on their own.



I confess I had a really strange and intricate dream last night that I keep remembering bits and pieces of. Could this find its way into a future poem?



I confess that I truly believe that as many as a third of the people in this country have no clue about fundamental issues, history, geography and current events. I also believe that many of these same people comprise a very vocal part of society that tends to consider themselves infallible and anointed with absolute truth. I had this thought yesterday though a less refined part of this assessment has been in my mind for many years now. I do however believe that more of these people are becoming involved. They are drawn to and are easily persuadable by others that can roughly be described the same way. How did we get so lucky? That’s totally rhetorical and I’m not looking for a bunch of comments.



Thanks for hanging in with me. Maybe next week I can be on time.

They're Back!

Yesterday morning as I was leaving for work I was greeted by geese.  We have a baseball field directly across the street from us and during their migration - twice a year we are visited by geese. They are astonishing in flight and fascinating to watch when they stopover to rest on the ball field. There were some 20 birds yesterday. I never know what to expect. Several years ago my daughter and I counted over a hundred of them on the field.

 

If you haven't caught it, Kelli Agodon has a great post on The Art of the Blurb.  She has had so many good writing advise posts to questions that have been posed to her recently so if you haven't been to her blog recently or like ever, I recommend it. Book of Kells.  I'm a pretty avid reader of Kelli's blog and as summer arrives she usually announces that she will be somewhat sporadic in her posts. My first reaction is of course a sigh. But each summer she will field questions and do responses or offer some writerly wisdom on her own.  She may not post as frequently, but the posts are always insightful.  It's no wonder she generally receives so many comments to her posts. 

 

Well, it's hump day and I've sinned. I missed Confession Tuesday. How did that happen anyway?  Well, I will have to collect myself and head to the confessional later today.

 

 

Understanding

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.  -Carl Jung

Revelation on Some Level

Presently the curb doesn't seem quite so fixed
the street lamps reflect pyramids
the pavement is the most permanent
I've experienced since I got out of bed
this morning I had no idea




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Food For Thought

Hunger also changes the world - when eating can't be a habit, then neither can seeing.  ~ Maxine Hong Kingston




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Music to my Ear

 

This morning I put on a play list of music that I've made specifically to write by. The first notable impact was that time became irrelevant to me. No clock watching was a good thing. It, along with other distractions were gone. Poof!

 

To say that I wrote the best ever would be a stretch but that isn't what is important. I was at ease and I was more productive in the time that I did allocate - which incidentally I ran past without notice till after the fact.

 

I worked on  completely new material. A project that I've had in mind but had not committed to paper in any way yet.  I started in my journal in long hand. Later in the morning I took it to my laptop and did some early cutting of excess. It's a start but I was very happy with it.

 

Early evening I got out for a photo shoot. Then came home and mowed the back yard.  The weather was nicer today then we've had for a while. It's been really hot here. Much more productive day then yesterday.

Can I have a Saturday do-over?

 

 

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Confession Tuesday

Forgive me dear reader, it's late and I'm tired. I confess I seriously considered skipping Confession today but that seemed so lazy and I did not want the guilt of feeling lazy. I've been very detail orientated today at work and I'm more mentally drained than physically tired.  But enough of that,,, it's confession time, let's get started.

A really strange thing occurred today at the office. I confess aging has been a fear of mine since - well since I turned at least 25. Yes, I said twenty-five.  I admit that the alternative to aging (death) is not real attractive either. But I digress-

This afternoon I paused as I was working in a project at my computer and looked down at my hand. I think I recall scratching the of my left hand with my right.  I noticed in the desk lighting that the back of my hand seemed more tanned than I would have thought. upon closer look it appeared to me that my skin seemed rougher... more wrinkled then I had ever noticed. This freaked me out!

I know this all sounds so silly, but somehow what I saw of my hands said more to me then looking in a mirror in the morning, Then looking at any of my recent pictures. I confess I freaked out!

Even as I write this tonight and look at my hands (admittedly in different lighting) they don't seem to freak me out like they did this afternoon.  I suppose this was simply a case of heightened anxiety and I confess that it makes me feel really silly.

Why can't I look at my overall view of aging as just something silly too?






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Their Hold on Me

They block the solar waves of summer

pounding the earth like arrows
and hold onto me by a plexus mass
spreading like a cancer through me

I'm unable to stop them
all summer long
they are rooted in my memory
and even as the fall turns on them
and the winter harshness beats them
brown and mats them
against my icy black loam
their hold on me is parasitical-
they will be back in spring



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U.S. for first time sends official representatives to Hiroshima Memorial Service in Japan

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima. In all these years since the event tragically killing some 145,000 civilians, the U.S. has for the first time this year sent a high level American official to the memorial held annually in Japan.  In cities in countries around the wold others too have paused to remember the horrific event. It is only fitting that we join others in recognizing this day, that we may acknowledge risks posed by nuclear proliferation and work to create world consensus to reduce these ricks.

Shuji Kajiyama / AP - photo credit

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