Apr 17
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing Happy bedfellows, national poetry month, Nick Flynn, Octavio Paz, poetry is the bestest!
First, an apology for not posting yesterday. We we’re busy welcoming family from out of town, which turned into a bit of a comedy of flerrors when their flight was diverted to Dulles due to weather and we wound up doing crosswords in the airport for a few hours. But even though I wasn’t writing about poetry, I was thinking about it (and I hope this post will make up for my absence).
Case in point: we made a brief stop in the airport Borders to kill some time. I poked around a bit, perusing the new arrivals and bargain books, when I realized that although they had sections for fiction, history, business, children, young adult, mystery, science fiction, and even graphic novels, there wasn’t any poetry to be found. I don’t suppose that’s all that surprising, but it got me to thinking about the way poetry is sidelined, left for expansive bookstores where a shelf of poetry can be shoved to the side or the smaller bookstores that make it their mission to fill the absence felt in major chains.
I know I’ve talked about it before this month, but I think that absence of poetry says a lot about our culture. Poetry is a medium of emotion, of awe, of raw observation, of formal experimentation. We (and I say we because I am as guilty of this as anyone) seek things that are interpreted for us, we look for stories that make emotions familiar or easy to digest. We want to be entertained, and we want it to be easy. Poetry doesn’t do that for us. Poetry asks us to interpret for ourselves, to be willing to be amazed.
With that in mind, I want to look at two poems today. The first is Octavio Paz’s “Pedestrian.” The second is Nick Flynn’s “Flood.” I see in them a dialogue, a mutual exploration of the way so many of us shy away from the grit, the core of life.
First, in “Pedestrian,” we get the image of a man walking, on a day like any other: “He walked among the crowds / on the Boulevard Sebasto, / thinking about things.”
Instantly, we are given something we can all connect to–we have been that man, lost in thought about work, about the errands we need to run, alone among the crowd. Then Paz stops the man, makes him wait at a red light, gives him a moment to notice things, to look up and see that “over / the gray roofs, silver / among the brown birds, / a fish flew.”
More than anything this is a moment crafted for awe, for amazement, for curiosity and questioning. But the man, the reader’s surrogate, does what we all would do, is too be drawn away again as the light turns green and he steps into the street, shaking his head, he wonders “what he’d been thinking.” He dismisses this amazing, crazy thing, knows it to be impossible. He doesn’t even bother to muse on the odd twist in his day, how the fish, even if it is only a trick of his imagination, is something worth noting.
Conversely, in his poem “Flood,” Nick Flynn actively embraces the strange, the curious, invites his reader along with him as the speaker of his poem experiences it for them. That speaker describes the titular flood, the detritus of a disaster as it drifts by while he seeks ever-higher ground.
In doing so, he recalls that “In grade school I heard / clouds could weight three tons & I wondered // why they didn’t all just fall to the ground.” He continues in a similar line of thinking as he tells us “I study rain, each drop shaped / like a comet, ten million of them, as if a galaxy // had exploded above us.”
What I love about Flynn’s poem is that he finds beauty and mystery in a flood, the kind of thing most see only as disaster and destruction. His speaker is the opposite of Paz’s pedestrian, caught up in the whorl of everyday and perfectly happy to stay there.
That’s why I love poetry. Because there is enough every day to go around, because it is far too easy to get caught up in the mundane, because we are taught throughout our lives to be logical and to explain away the extraordinary. With poetry, read or written, we find a chance to escape that way of thinking. So I say three cheers for the extraordinary.
Apr 13
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing i'd rather be jumping in puddles, national poetry month, poetry out of nothing challenge, red rainboots, yay poems!
As promised, I have my first Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge poem to share with you today. When I was pre-writing yesterday’s post, I found myself noticing small things in each day–the man behind me at the stoplight, rapping his heart out; the girl walking to the light rail in her bright red galoshes; the exquisite taste of a lemon cake where the sweet of the icing meets the tart of the citrus. These are not, at first glance, the things of literary greatness. And yet they are, in their way, infinitely poetic.
So that’s where I started: the details. Specifically the details of my drive to and from work–that man singing, the way I feel as I sit stranded at a red light, the inevitable panicky feeling of running late. It should be said that I’m an awful commuter. It’s not that I mind getting up and going to work, it’s the drive to get there. I have road rage, I want to smash traffic signals, and, being as my car is locked in 1993 (i.e. tinny radio and broken tape player), I’m a perennial channel surfer who often comes down with a terrible case of the irksome pop song earworm. All this adds up to lots of awful singing interspersed with howls of fury and well-chosen hand gestures.
As I made notes about my commute and sat with them for awhile, I found in them what I believe to be those shared experiences that I hope others may recognize from their own lives: the ruts, figurative and literal, that we wear into our minds and landscapes each day. The surprising things that can come out of the routine. The ebb and flow of frustration around tiny inconveniences.
I know this may not be a great poem, but it fits where I’m at right now, and so I let it be my guide, let it help me synthesize the repetitive motion of the work-a-day world with all its successes and, yes, stresses. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Commuter
It is
hands on
the wheel,
wheels on
the pavement,
circular motion
of a day.
He is
the man behind
me spittin’
rhymes like no one
is watching,
but
I am.
That is,
if my blood
doesn’t boil
over, foot hovering
above the accelerator,
because,
thing is,
when given
control of my own
destiny, I am
never
on time.
~Meredith Purvis
****Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge Update****
1. The deadline has been extended to April 27, 2011.
2. There are now prizes! Yay, prizes! I’ll be creating a page with general info about the challenge and details about the prizes, so keep an eye out for that today or tomorrow.
3. Winners will be determined by popular vote. I’ll figure out the voting process and pass that info along as soon as I have it.
Apr 11
MeredithBookmaking, Poetry, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing a window into poetry, bookiness, Christina Gay, guest blogger, Jenny O'Grady, national poetry month, the bluest bird
I’m thrilled to introduce today’s guest blogger, Christina Gay. Christina is a crafter, marshmallow-maker, Marion Winik’s webmistresses, and the managing editor of Passager. She lives with her husband in the Pen Lucy community of Baltimore. She makes the most amazing cards and books–they are stunning in their beauty, craftsmanship, and innovation. I was so pleased when she told me that not only would she blog for us, she would be looking at how she turns poems into books. And so, without further ado…
When Meredith asked me to guest blog, I went back and forth in my head trying to pick a favorite poem to talk about. Of course, it took days, and I never settled on one. But then I thought, Why not talk about how I interpret poems, which is to make them into books.
I’m focusing on a collaborative project by myself and poet Jenny O’Grady. Jenny shared this wonderful poem with me as part of my FaceBook Poem Project, where I ask friends to share something they wrote with me and I make a mini-book interpretation of it.
When I start on a new poem/book, I first live with the poem for a little bit, trying not to over-interpret it. By the second or third reading, I usually have pretty good image of how I want to book to be. It’s not always an easy decision; I just try to keep it simple and go with my gut. One poem could have many books: it’s all about the bookmaker’s immediate interpretation. That excites me: you can experience the same poem in so many different ways. This book that I made with “Bluebird” by Jenny O’Grady is a good example of this (poem published here with permission from the author and for your reading pleasure only).
Bluebird
you escaped on horseback
the cotton of your hospital gown
unsnapped and
flying behind you,
the laces cringing, retaining
the shape
of your captivity
you trusted the mare
pushed your face into
her mane and
let your mind skip
ahead to now
~Jenny O’Grady
When Jenny shared this poem with me, she mentioned that although the title is “Bluebird”, that fact has little to do with the actual poem. For me, this poem is about the window and the thoughts and images it inspires. So for the physical shape of the book I made a classic four-pane window (of course there is plastic “glass” in the windows), attaching a small bluebird to the inside of the back cover. Although I try to stay away from such literalness, I used blue for the covers, because blue always seems to me to be the color of memory. As for the bluebird, the beauty of its blue is only matched by the reddish-orange of its breast. It was that color that inspired the type color.
In lieu of actual letterpressing, I “stamped” the text onto the pages. This is fairly simple to do, and I hope others will do it as well: print your page (reversed) onto acetate or some kind of plastic at the “best” setting on your ink jet printer, and then use a bone folder to rub the ink onto the page. This is easier than it might sound, and the emotional payoff is huge!
Because part of bookmaking is presentation, I bound the book with the piano-hinge method so that it can be opened fully. I love this poem, and have found a true personal connection to it. And now I can hold it in my hand, and see it through the windows. A true privilege.
I hope this will inspire you to make a book, either with your own work or someone else’s. And if you’d like to collaborate in making a book, please contact me through my blog. Thank you, Meredith, for this opportunity!
Apr 10
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing brooks, ginsberg, Half a league to the golden shovel in a red wheelbarrow or a straw hut and babies in the tomatoes or perhaps that black shoe, komunyakaa, national poetry month, plath, tennyson, the poetry archive, the sounds of poetry, williams
I read once, I wish I could remember where, that poetry, when written, is only half finished. That the true art in poetry comes from the exchange between writer and reader, and, in fact, is most complete when the poetry is read out loud. Perhaps it was the same place or perhaps another where I first learned the idea that poetry is a physical art, an art of the body; that more than pen on paper it is the air in the lung, the vibrations in the vocal chords that are the tools of this art.
I believe those two things, and I know that they are most true when they meet in the reader moving from silent review of the words to a full bodied declamation. Only then can the rhythms and the sounds truly be discovered, only then can the music of poetry be heard.
So today, I wanted to share with you some poetry recordings. I do, I think, aspire to bring you newer or lesser known authors, partly because I fear I can say nothing of value on the great and most well-studied of writers, but also because there are so many wonderful poets out there, and it is my hope to help you discover some of them. But, for today, it seems most appropriate to offer up some poems or poets you may well have heard of, but perhaps never heard aloud. Most of these come from The Poetry Archive, a fantastic non-profit.
Half a league, half a league, half a league onward: Alfred Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
I love his full, sonorous voice, the scratch and pop of the recording.
Seven at the golden shovel: Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool”
This poem is a staple in lower-level English courses, where teachers struggle to show students the beauty and validity of poetry. The first time I heard Brooks read this, it was as if I had come across an entirely new poem. The lilt and pause make this.
So much depends upon: William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”
This is a short poem, and so Williams’ reading of it is even more crucial–how he draws out some words, lavishing them with breath, and clips, staccato, through others.
Unbelievable faith in water: Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Instructions on Building Straw Huts”
I love the rolling rhythm Komunyakaa brings to this poem. In fact, I think I could happily listen to him reading just about anything.
Babies in the tomatoes: Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California”
This is perhaps my favorite poem of all. It is one I memorized, reciting it slowly to myself. Then I heard Ginsberg reading it, and I let him teach me how it should be read.
You do not do, you do not do: Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”
It is simple: you cannot know this poem until you hear Plath read it–her arch, expressive voice, the emotion she laces the words with, full to bursting, but tightly controlled.
A quick look ahead: I’m so looking forward to tomorrow, when Christina Gay will be our guest blogger. She’ll be taking a look at what it means to turn a poem into an art book.
Apr 05
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing G.C. Waldrep, national poetry month, okay so writing's pretty good too, poetry for breakfast, reading is the best thing ever, the comfort found in the rolling lurch of a train
If you know me, you know that I am famous, of late, for my car troubles. So when an awful, terrible, no good, very bad grinding sound started in my car yesterday, it meant that I’d be delivering my beloved Buick LeSabre to my knight in shining armor, or, more aptly, my mechanic. Which in turn meant taking the light rail in to work.
For all its hassles, the ride this morning gave me a chance to begin working my way through G.C. Waldrep’s Goldbeater’s Skin, which I’ve owned for quite some time now, and I thought I’d use that extra time to choose a poem to write about this evening. But, as chance would have it, I wound up coming up with a different idea altogether. Instead of writing about the book or any of the particular poems in it, I want to share, as best I can, what reading poetry is like for me.
I think that, basic mechanics aside, everyone reads and interacts with poetry differently. It’s not something I’ve put a lot of thought into before now, but this morning I found myself acutely aware of what was happening in my mind as I worked my way through the book.
I started out a bit frazzled, my mind still hopping around from place to place and refusing to just calm down and pay attention. But then I could feel my focus deepen, and I began to underline favorite phrases, write down questions and notes in the margin.
By about the seventh poem in, I was fully absorbed, chewing over the sounds of the words in my head, letting myself rest in the line breaks and careen ahead down long lines. I began to notice things I might not have noticed otherwise–the full bodied sound of the word “thrum,” the under-appreciated perfection of the word “roiled,” the genius substituion of “ripe” for “ready” in the phrase “like a jet / that’s ripe for landing.” I fell in love with the work-a-day words we so easily ignore like “scuff” and “linoleum.”
I found myself re-reading poems just for the chance to see the words again, to form the images in my mind. And then I realized that words and images of my own were clamoring to be written down, and so I set the book aside and pulled out my journal, wrote a few lines, gathered together a rough draft of one full poem. As I looked down at what I had written, Waldrep’s influence screamed out from the page–my lines had drifted longer, I’d incorporated terse commands, used repetition for emphasis and rhythm.
Had I not found myself with that unexpected block of time, had I instead picked up the book from time to time and read a poem or two, I don’t know that I would have found such joy in it. I don’t know that it would have pushed me to pick up my own pen and write. I do know that I wouldn’t have been so attentive to what was there in front of me.
I don’t know if those commuter scribblings will ever see the light of day, but it was a reminder to me of how crucial it is for poets to read. Other writers can serve as teachers and as the source of inspiration, letting us refocus on our work or even get back in to it if we’ve been away for awhile. Reading other poetry specifically to search for guidance and ideas can break stale habits or encourage us to try something we hadn’t considered before. And ultimately, we can take that inspiration and tutelage and re-channel it into our own writing practice, into further developing our styles and voices.
I’ll leave you this evening with a few lines from Waldrep’s “Heave-Ho,” which were my favorite find of the day. I hope you’ll enjoy them, and then tell me, how do you read poetry?
We could stand very near water and pretend to be bridges,
then others would spraypaint news of their own affections on our thighs
in bright colors. You think I’m joking. But in my dreams
someone is always cutting bolts from my back.
Apr 04
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing daniel hall, national poetry month, on wings of song, taking wing, this is why I love teaching, yay
Precise, clean, supple language. That is what I find in today’s poem by Daniel Hall which was featured in the collection On Wings of Song, edited by J.D. McClatchy.
The poem, called “Short Circuit,” is the portrait of a moment. I’ve actually written about it here once before, but only in a brief exclamation of love for the words. Today I’m going to look at it a bit more closely.
In the first stanza, we find an image of chaos, tightly written. With the words “For no reason, / all at once,” Hall pulls his readers in, leaving us wanting to know what it is, exactly, at what is happening.
Then he gives us the contrasting image of the dove and jay, a continuation of the chaotic mix alluded to earlier. We imagine the quiet, delicate dove next to the raucous, bossy jay, watch them as “all at once” they swerve and land on the line and set the drying clothes to dancing. Ultimately, what we are given here is beauty out of dissonance, something that we can find in everyday life.
But perhaps what I prize most about this poem is something I only realized tonight: Hall is willing to be in awe of something, willing to express joy and amazement at the world around him, even with his tightly controlled and well-honed words.
The reason for this new-found appreciation at the willingness to wonder is that I opened my class this evening by explaining to my students that it was National Poetry Month. Then I asked if anyone in the room liked poetry and was met with a resounding wall of “no.” I pushed them to explain why. “It’s cheesy,” said one student. “It sounds pretentious,” added another. A third rolled his eyes at me and said, “You don’t even want me to explain.”
The consensus was that poetry was worthless, too hoity toity or goofy to be taken seriously, and that it existed only as a black-clad, beret-wearing, cigarette-smoking cliche. I must admit that none of this was surprising to me–I’ve been met with that response before–but I soldiered on and read them Hall’s poem, doing my best to keep it down to earth. One student even snapped for me, coffee-house style, at the end. Then he asked, “What does it mean, Ms. Purvis?”
I shared with the class the interpretation I’ve given here, ending with my thought that Hall’s main point is that opposites can come together to create beauty. By the end of my mini lecture, the tone in the class had shifted, almost imperceptibly, but it had shifted nonetheless. One student nodded knowingly as she said, “You just described most marriages.” The student who asked for the explanation nodded too and said, “I see what you mean.”
That brief exchange, those few minutes at the beginning of class, made me look at myself and my art a little differently. I could have told you, would have willingly lamented that many people can’t find the value in poetry, that they find it intimidating, that they can’t see past the surface to what is really there. I’d have likely added that we poets sometimes even hurt our own cause when we get wrapped up in our art and scholarship and let a gap grow between us and anyone who doesn’t have the same love for poetry. We forget what it feels like to be on the other side of poetry, especially for those who have to work harder to find the joy in it.
But what I realized tonight is that the problem is far deeper than a misunderstanding of art. There’s a fear of awe, of looking at something and saying out loud, “that’s beautiful, that’s amazing, I can’t believe how lucky I am to be here, seeing this.” We are afraid, it seems, to be enthusiastic, to seem naive or innocent, to be cheesy in our appreciation of the world around us. How often have you heard someone offer their praise or admiration of something with a disclaimer: “I know this sounds cheesy, but,” or “I don’t want to sound over the top, but…”? I’ve done it myself, even within the last day or so.
And yet, what I saw in my class tonight is that when we work to bridge that gap, when we build an environment where it’s okay not to “get it” right away, when we tell one another that it’s okay to be in awe, then we open the door for conversation about and maybe even enthusiasm (at least a little) for poetry.
So I’m left with just one question–which poem will we read on Wednesday?
Feb 12
MeredithUncategorized cooking is actually kind of fun, dishpan hands, don't worry one of those pies is for work, still learning to love leftovers, Taking the kitchen by storm, tired of doing dishes, wearing out my pots and pans
As I write this, I’m peering at the screen through a haze of smoke, courtesy of the potato and artichoke lasagnas that have overflown in the oven. They look good, and I’m hoping they’ll be as tasty as they appear, but this bit of cooking (the “oops” moments like the overflowing dish, the burned or cut finger) is not my favorite. But I’ve made up my mind that cooking needs to be a bigger part of my life, and so I’ve thrown open the window and turned on the fan, and I’m thinking about how the cold seeping in will help when I’m making up my pie crust (the colder the better, or so I’m told).
Since my last post, I’ve been practicing my cooking skills. I whipped up some roasted garlic and tomato soup which I divided up portions to eat right away and to freeze. I’d never roasted tomatoes before–it’s surprisingly easy. And in the spirit of making my cooking my own, I added in basil (because tomato and basil soup is pretty heavenly). When the soup was all finished, I made up a grilled cheese sandwich and then sat down to a delicious meal.
I continued my soup making with the tasty “spicy hot pot with noodles.” With ginger and plenty of red pepper, it was delicious way to clear out my sinuses while delighting my taste buds. I do think if I make it again I’ll use rice noodles instead of the fettuccine it called for.
The rest of the last week or so saw me chopping, grilling, baking, and cooking up a storm (with plenty of help from Ave). Our menu has included lazy baked Greek chicken, meatballs and minestra, maduros con queso (a Costa Rican dish) grilled chicken and roast tomato salad, stuffing seasoned chicken cutlets with pear sauce, crab rangoons (a Super Bowl tradition), mushroom and marsala pappardelle, and that beeping will be the potato and artichoke lasagna coming out of the oven. Cooking is a lot of work, but the results are delicious. And up tomorrow? Two pies: strawberry and blackberry.
Jan 28
MeredithUncategorized ave's going to be so glad i've decided to cook more, cherry pie, food is tasty, I feel like this post is full of R's like Rachel and Rose and Recipe and Relaxation, learning to love left overs, maybe cooking's not so bad after all, presto pesto
As I relish this last weekend before the chaos of the spring semester begins, I’m taking some time to slow down, some time for myself.
While I was in Costa Rica, I came across an old copy of the magazine Every Day with Rachel Ray. As I leafed through it, I kept bookmarking recipes that looked so delicious I could hardly stand it. I dragged the magazine back home with me, and today I stopped at the grocery store for some ingredients and then cooked myself up a delicious dinner. Now, I’m going to take inspiration from my friend Rose and share that dinner, and its significance to my life in this moment, with you.
The recipe was called Lentils with Winter Pesto and Braised Sausages. I chose it because it wasn’t too intimidating and it incorporated a lot of fresh ingredients, like parsley and arugula and carrots and (gasp) onion.
I started out my endeavor with some cleaning–I like to start with a nice empty kitchen before I get going. And then I set to work chopping and chopping and chopping and chopping some more, separating ingredients to be sauteed and braised and pureed.
As I worked, I thought about my general aversion to cooking. I like to tell people I don’t like to cook, unless its for a special occasion, like Thanksgiving or a special birthday dinner. I think the real problem is that I’m not so great at waiting–I like to eat when I’m hungry, and if a meal can be ready in 5 minutes or less, so much the better. I’m a slow cook, I realized, as I spent the better part of half an hour picking off leaves of parsley and mint for the pesto.
But then, as the ingredients began to pile up, I started to think about what’s nice about cooking. There’s a certain kind of peace that comes in losing yourself in a project that requires your full focus, letting the day fall away as you move around the kitchen. There’s something relaxing in the rhythm of chopping and adding and stirring. There’s anticipation in watching the recipe come together, and a certain thrill and delight in the smells as you mix and mingle the ingredients. And it feels good to know that the food your about to eat fits together and looks beautiful and feels healthy (at least a heck of a lot healthier than the cheese pizza you’d been thinking about ordering).
There’s also a certain kind of art in cooking. It’s an art I don’t always trust myself with. I watch with envy as other people eyeball amounts and swap out ingredients with brazen confidence. I’m the kind of cook who likes thorough explanations and careful measurements, who follows the recipe to the most minute level (I’ve lost hours of my life shaking and scraping and adjusting cups of flour so they’re perfectly even and full). But tonight I decided to let myself take liberties. I substituted in pecans for walnuts, nixed the celery all together, confidently put in nutmeg from a spice jar instead of the fresh grated that Rachel called for. I let myself work with what I had and make the recipe mine. It was a nice feeling.
As I sat down to a savory dinner, I decided to try to make more of an effort in the kitchen. I decided to try to make menus, to learn to like left overs. Because if I can find peace in cooking, if I can avoid stress because meals are made ahead of time, if I can eat a bit healthier, and if I can save a bit of money, what have I got to lose? Nothing.
So with that in mind, I’ve begun a menu for the week:
-Tomato and garlic soup (made and stored for the nights I teach)
-Meatballs and minestra (also to eat then store for teaching nights)
-Stuffing-seasoned chicken cutlets with pear sauce
-Eggplant and squash curry
-Chicken with apple gravy, rice pilaf, and green beans
And, because the one thing I really love to do in the kitchen is bake, tomorrow I’m going to make a cherry pie. With a homemade crust. Booyah.
Jan 28
MeredithPersonal, Uncategorized because its good to look back sometimes, holy crap where did the year go?, is that belly button lint?, navel gazing of the highest order
I’ve been working on this post since December. Now, I suppose, it’s really a bit late for it, but given the January I’ve had, I’m making the command decision that my 2011 really starts in February. So, without further ado, a look back at 2010, highs and lows alike.
January/February:
As 2009 gave way to 2010, I was standing at a turning point in my career. I started an exciting new job at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) as the Alumni and Development Communications Coordinator. It allowed me to continue working in writing and communications, but it allowed me to expand in some important ways. I was now in a higher education setting. I began to grow my skills in social media and video shooting/editing. And in addition to the awesome career step it would prove to be, I found myself surrounded by talented, creative, hardworking people that make coming to work a pleasure.
And with the new year, I also began my last semester of grad school. I was, as I suspect most of my classmates were, excited and nervous about the months ahead, which I was sure would be a blur of hard work, frustration, excitement, and progress toward a long-awaited goal.
March/April:
I made 30 copies of my book, The Mockingbird’s Song, by hand. ‘Nuff said.
May:
I can’t remember much of those late winter and early spring months–revisions upon revisions and assignment upon assignment, they faded, as I expected they would, into one big, crazy busy time. But then May arrived, and with it spring and new excitement. I was granted a Master of Fine Arts Degree–easily one of the most exciting moments of my life. My mom and dad, both my grandmas, and my Aunt Cindy all traveled to Baltimore to celebrate with me and all the friends I’ve made in the last few years.
June/July:
I headed into the summer resolutely refusing to do anything productive. I wallowed in the freedom from classes, enjoying my evenings and doing as little as I possibly could. But then, as I am wont to do, I got bored and began looking for ways to make life more busy. I found the perfect diversion when a good friend of mine asked me to substitute teach for her English class at CCBC (Community College of Baltimore County) for a couple weeks in July. I was, she said, to focus on poetry. What a fantastic turn of luck for me–I was going to get my first chance to teach, and I was going to get to teach one of the things I love most of all. I’m not sure what those students thought of me as I trotted out Sylvia Plath and Langston Hughes, Sherman Alexie and Kim Addonizio, but I had a blast.
August:
My substitute teaching finished, my friend suggested I apply for an adjunct teaching position at CCBC. I did so with much enthusiasm but little hope that it would come to anything, given my lack of experience. But I was happily surprised when I was offered a section of English 101 all for my very own self. I only had a week to prepare (I was a last-minute hire), but I threw myself into planning my first class. I also had the great good fortune to volunteer as a Teaching Assistant for my friend Jenny’s electronic publishing class at the University of Baltimore. With my teaching load, my fall turned into another big blur of busy time, but I was happy as could be in the classroom.
September/October/November:
Somehow, in the midst of all I had going on, I began to find time to get back into bookmaking. When I struck up a conversation with a local shop owner about my hobby, I got an offer to sell my books on consignment. Charlotte Elliott, a fantastic store in Hampden, requested 40 blank journals for the holiday season. For about two weeks, I spent every spare moment I could find in my workshop, and I delivered the books to them in October. From there, some of the journals have gone on to exciting and distant locales like Paris and Turkey. I can only hope a few have stayed local, too.
Then, as the holiday season approached, a number of friends and family began to request custom journals to give as gifts. Avelino and I got back into the workshop and managed to get the books out in time for Christmas. We were excited to hear that everyone loved their books and to learn about how people were using them–one will be a class notebook for a woman studying to be a nurse, another a pregnancy journal.
December:
I graded papers. And then I graded some more. And then a couple more, just for the fun of it. And then, thankfully, the semester ended. Seems like a good time to relax, right? Wrong. As I put my grades to bed, I decided it was time to make our annual Christmas cards. But they wouldn’t just be any old cards–they’d be cards featuring hand-embroidered ornaments. Because I’m crazy. Neither Ave or I had ever embroidered anything in our lives. And yet, miraculously (and with help from Ave’s dad, who is a maverick with a needle), they got done.
At about that same time, I decided to buy a sewing machine and embark on my first big sewing project–a blanket made of polar fleece and wool, with a border featuring a heart/leaf pattern embroidered in French knots. And I would give that project as a Christmas gift. Fortunately, I was granted an extension till Three Kings Day, and, sewing up to the very last second, I got it finished, and it didn’t look half bad.
In December, I learned (again) that I have a tendency to dive headfirst into really big, daunting pursuits. Someday, I will stop doing that.
January 2011:
Hectic.I think this may be the only word to describe January of 2011 as I lived it. It was not without its sweet spots, but wrapped all together, it rolled and tumbled through my life and I am relieved to be rid of it.
I began the month in Missouri, wrapping up a wonderful trip home to visit with my family. It was good to see how well everyone is doing and to spend some quality time with my parents, my siblings, and my grandma. However, it ended sooner than I would have liked and I shuttled back home for about six days that I divided between work and time spent comatose in front of the television before jetting off to Kansas City. My return to the Midwest was brief and busy as my co-workers and I trained on a new product we’ll be using. After three days in the bone-chilling cold and ice, it was back to Baltimore for another 5 days where I upped the ante on vegging and tried to prepare for the next trip.
Things seemed to be going along alright until I went to find my passport about 36 hours before we were scheduled to leave for Costa Rica. This shouldn’t have been a problem, as I have a dedicated lock box for important documents, and yet, somehow, it was–my passport was not there. Thus began the most horrendous day ever.
We started by searching the house. To his credit, Ave was diligent and thorough in his search while I alternated between hand wringing, frantic scrabbling, hyperventilating, and weeping. At about 1 a.m., I took a really hot shower and drugged myself with Nyquil in an attempt to get some, any sleep. I was up at 6 a.m. the next morning and off to work where, I hoped, I might find the missing document. My hoping was for naught, and so it was off through the ice to the Washington, D.C. passport office. We were, of course, running late, and in my hurry to get into a parking garage, I managed to wing my car on a wall, smashing in my bumper and busting out a headlight. Then, joy of joys, we spent several hours waiting in line at the passport agency, where I was finally told that for about a bajillion dollars I could, indeed, get my passport replaced that day. Despite (because of?) everything that I had been through, and despite all the cranky people at the passport office, I could have kissed that rather sullen employee.
And so it was that the next morning at 8 a.m. I climbed on a plane (after checking that my passport was indeed in my purse about five zillion times) and headed to Costa Rica. It was, by far, one of the most amazing trips I have ever been on, and it will get its own post in the next day or so. I fell in love with that place, its monkeys and geckos, its sunsets and plantains. Best of all, my time in Costa Rica gave me a sense of peace as I head into February and the rest of 2011, which is a pretty good way to feel.
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