Confession Tuesday - Paranoia, Writing, Baseball and No Baseball

Dear Readers-

It’s been one week and a doctor’s visit since my last confession. Let’s move to the box.

I confess to a bit of paranoia associated with both my upcoming flu shot scheduled for October 10 and the coughing, congested sinus thing I had going on this weekend.  Why, you ask? Okay, you didn’t but I’m going to tell you anyway. Last year I got a flu shot, just as I have for many years now.  But last year I actually contracted the flu a couple months later.  I was hit hard by this. It was one of the more memorable times I’ve been ill not so much because it was the most recent but because I felt like hell in many ways. We are talking both Flu and pneumonia.  Besides, it came on the heels of two other periods of sickness. I was weak, sore chest, feverish, headache, had a chaotic cough and had trouble breathing. So all this is to say I’m over obsessing about that period when I looked and felt like hell.

Yesterday, I began a six week writing session. I’m working with another poet (this will be the third time in four years I’ve done this) and I confess I always find it both stimulating and a little prone to anxiety. I always seem to get past the anxiety though and quite frankly it’s self-inflicted. I think every writer should do this once a year no matter how long they have been writing.  I recommend you find someone for starters whose work you really respect. I think it helps too if you know something about that person’s work ethic. I sometimes have multi objectives but the major one is always force myself outside the comfort zone.  If your writing is always comfortable how interesting can it be?

I’m excited about fall ball again this year. My San Francisco Giants have won the western division championship once again. I confess that I know they probably don’t have the best talent overall on their team, but they do have talented players and their secret I feel is that this team has real chemistry.  When they went all the way to the World Series in 2010 and won it was good pitching, good defense and out of this world team chemistry.

And now for my disclaimer for the time of year. It’s coming up on SAD time.  I confess that my family doesn’t buy the whole SAD thing. They don’t see it as Seasonal Affective Disorder but rather Seasonal Adjustment Disorder. They believe it is not about less sunlight and more about baseball, or the lack thereof. So to them SAD represents that time when baseball is gone from my life. When it returns in spring, I’m all happy again. Sure, I’ll admit I’m a happier and more amicable person during baseball season as a general rule, but I don’t think it’s that simple. 

Confession Tuesday - Backhoe Edition

It's been a week since my last confession. A cooler week and I got a haircut and mowed the grass in the same week. The weather being what it's been it had been longer between yard mows then haircuts... I think.

Come along, it's confession time and I'm sure I have something I can confess.

Dear Reader:

Yesterday I was driving through the city when I pulled up behind two other cars at a stop light. Hearing the deep sound of gears engaging I saw on the passenger side of the car a big yellow monster taking up the better part of two lanes between myself and the curb. Said yellow monster was backing my direction while on the front end it was lifting a heavy metal plate from the asphalt. All of this was under the direction of a man who was talking on a cell phone in the drivers seat. I confess that my Capricorn sensibility cause me to utter out loud WTF is this dumb shit doing? Neither I our our car was harmed in the incident. All I can say today looking back was thank God he wasn't texting. People - this does not seem like a multi-tasking sort of job. As I drove away I said a prayer that no bad incidents occurred the rest of the day at this work site.

Monday night is one night where we especially enjoy the TV shows. Major Crimes and Perception being two shows we watch. It's a night Cathy (my wife) looks forward to watching TV. So last night was a most inopportune time for our cable to crash but it did.  Now I could I could see how some people could say make the best of it and do something like... read a good book. I confess I did not do that. I too look forward to Monday night TV not only because of the shows but because it's something we do together. So last night was a downer for both of us.  I confess we ended up going to bed earlier then normal.  By the way, tech support was unable to again get it running and we remain without it again tonight and it will be tomorrow before the service people can come out.

I probably should confess something related to writing so thinking back this week I guess there are a few things I can touch on about writing. One is that I am excited that  I am about to begin a six week mentoring session with an awesome poet. This will be the third fall I've done this and it is something I really need this fall. Personally I think this is the kind of thing every poet should plan to do once a year. I confess that if I had 6 books published and another one or two waiting in the wings I would think there is value in this. So yes, I confess that I am excited. I'm always a little anxious at the same time because your work is going to be under more scrutiny in the draft form.

Coming upon the last quarter of the year I always try and take an inventory of where I am in my writing. I confess this can be a humbling experience. So I've been thinking a lot about this year a lot these past few weeks.

And last- on an upbeat note of sorts. A rejection letter this week with a positive note,,,  It read in part, "Dear Michael,  thank you for submitting to XXXXX Journal. It was great to see your work in our reading line up again. We have carefully reviewed your submission. Although it was not selected for publication this time in our journal, we wanted to let you know that your poems XXXX and XXXXXX did make it to our final round of readings for their wonderful images and subject matter...."  I confess that if you are going to be rejected, that a pretty decent rejection.

The Mag 135: Venus Has The Hots

Venus and The Sailor - Salvador Dali

Venus has the hots-

her dancing shadow passes before us.

Swishing her dress about.

The seductive danseur-

she can lure us into her orbit.

We easily feel connected

if not by want then curiosity,

brilliance in the morning

and evening-  

Even mid-day she can flaunt

in our imagination - or is it?

The Mag 135

Michael A. Wells

  

Journal Bits - Sept. 8 - Sept.14

A few items from my written journal...

• September 8, 2012 - Oh how I love to start a new journal. Empty pages to welcome me. I always promise to try and be neat about my entries but I know at some point I will disappoint myself in this regard. 
• September 8, 2012 - How many unwritten considerations/belong to the wind?//The future collect unclaimed thoughts.
• September 8, 2012 - I did not speak/for bewilderment /I did not speak/for an elevator fell/to the bottom of my stomach. 
• September 9, 2012 - "The invented person, borrowed from the real- abstracted, isolated- is the person we finally know, or feel we know. I made myself up from everything I am, or could be. For many years I was more desire than fact. When I stop becoming, That's when I worry." ~ Stephen Dunn
• September 10, 2012 - There is a relevance in numbers/you can have a bullet with each one's name/with nothing to erase the massive history.
• September 11,2012 - Feeling better these past couple of days about the Obama campaign. GOP is spending money like mad but the candidates, Romney and Ryan are making so many mistakes and their campaign handlers are really amateurish. I can hope this continues.
• September 13, 2012 - Heard in a Lionel Richie song this morning on the radio during drive time... "...people want me to be what they want me to be..."
• September 13, 2012 - You keep tabs on the important stuff/the primary colors of our life/I've always dealt with the more mundane-/the black and white...
• September 14, 2012 - from a comment in Modern Poetry class, "the how of what you say is more important then what you say..."

* NOTE:  My journal is where I record notes, quotes, observations (large and small), and poetry drafts. It ranges from junk to gems.

Confession Tuesday - What's wrong with eating your cake?

Oh hey, it’s Tuesday again – I’m off to the confessional.

We’ve been blessed with some gorgeous days this past week and I confess it has at times reminded me of San Francisco weather and I love it!  I know it won’t last.  I love the sun but not so much the heat.  I like sunny days and a bit of cool breeze. Yeah, I’m funny like that. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.

When I received an e-mail from our HR department reminding us about flu season and flu shot availability, I have to confess it brought back some anxiety on my part.  I received a flu shot last year, as I have for several years now. Being diabetic I fall into the category of people who are highly recommended to get a shot.  Still, I was hit hard by the flu only a few months after the vaccination. It was an illness that was especially rough on me. So the reminder was not a pleasant one.

I was driving tonight in our (new to us) Volvo which we recently acquired and realized for the first time that I missed the compos that is on the rearview mirror in the Mercury Sable. I confess that I never thought about it but I have depended upon it many more times then I really am consciously aware of.  I had to resort to using my Sprint navigator.  

Thant’s it for this confession, everyone have a great week!

Of Interest to Poets Around the Internet

Below are a few interesting reads on the Internet for poets and those interested in poetry- hope you find something the touches your interests.

• Letters of Interest - shares Letter to a Young Poet
• Poetry Magazine - 100 Poets for change - back for a second year 
• The Guardian - John Clare, The Poet of the Environmental Crisis - 200 Years Ago
• Washington Times - Photo of Emily Dickinson at 30?
• The Atlantic - Found Poetry from Amazon Kindle Reveal
• SF Gate - Chandler Poet finds focus after bipolar diagnosis
• NPR - Safe Landing For 'Stag's Leap'? On Sharon Olds' latest book
• The Atlantic - How Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey Wrote Her Father's Elegy
• The Christian Century -  No Poetry in Politics

Anniversary Missed~

September 2nd was the 9th anniversary of Stickpoet Super Hero.  Nine years of blogging at this site and I somehow missed the anniversary.  That's what life does for you.

In a way perhaps it is fitting that it passed without an anniversary fan fair post. I'm probably blogging less these days then I have in the past. In 2005 I had a total of 421 blog posts - a nine year annual high. The last time I exceeded 400 posts was 2007 and last year I had a total of 257. There are times when I want to so a particular post on a topic but I'm busy and days pass and so does the urge to write that particular post and I'm thinking about something else to write about altogether.

I would like to believe that as I move into the tenth year on this blog that I find topics and craft writing that is increasingly interesting and perhaps is more engaging with readers. I don't want to be just going through the motions of blogging for the sake of it.

The fact that I have blogged with less frequency is not to say I have less interest in blogs as a media. Some have suggested that Facebook and Twitter have diminished the relevancy of blogging. I disagree with this notion and believe that these two newer venues have significant places in the communication spectrum but when best used they supplement blogging rather then replace it. If you said today we must do away with two of these three forms of communication I would argue to save blogging.

I do think Facebook and Twitter have become popular for a couple of reasons. One is the narrowing focus many have on reading. To may 140 characters has become  something the can wrap their attention around. Maybe that's because of how busy we have all become but I think it also reflects a decline in the emphasis overall of reading. The other aspect is the electronic aspect of socialization that has in many respects replaced real face-to face-socialization. In this respect, blogging differs from Facebook and Twitter and underscores why I believe it remains an important means of communication.

All this is to say that I Stickpoet enters year 10 with a anticipation of continuing dialogue and information as well as sharing some personal aspects of my writing journey.  It's my hope that we will look back on this current year no matter the number - with quality first and quantity second.