Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Memory: From the Days of Steve Salamander

Listen!
As we near another July 4, here is a ghost of a July 4th past: "Your Hometown" -- an excerpt from "Til Steve Salamander Returns" The story was composed my first summer in Seattle and published last summer. More than a little bit of my heart is in the story... and the place and the characters therein.

P.S. Working in HTML mode on this one because of the embedding code. Having quite a time getting that photo sized right -- so no photo for now.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Sunday Evening Reflection

It's Sunday evening, and Bartell's is closed. You know online writing is a big part of your life when you have the lentils, you have the spinach, you have the garlic... but you lack a disposable camera to record the process.

Photo essays are motivation to keep a reasonably clean kitchen. So is moving from my current apartment, as I noted in a previous post.

I write several places on the internet, and am kind of sorta beginning to have an online community that stretches across sites. But that's not why I've written less on this blog this month. Ah, no. It's that there are things I can't discuss and things I can't not discuss -- and here and there posts that I simply don't want to cover up too soon.

This blog here is my baby. This blog here is my tenuous connection to... important parts of my life. That clock picture got inadvertently left out of a video I put up a few weeks ago.

Once again -- another post will probably pop under under this one.


Reflection: Flower Phone


A poem by Robert Frost ironically (for me) titled "The Phone". Ah, but here the phone is not a phone but a flower who seems to convey tidings from a loved one.

I recorded this a while ago, and there it sat in my drafts. I don't think I've posted it yet on my public domain poetry site, where I've been posting pretty much a public domain poem a day -- no, not a pace I'm going to keep up forever, but good for getting the site off the ground. It's doing the "Professional Squid" blogging challenge... 30 posts in 30 days.

(I know...Professional Squids!?)

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Reflection: Summer Sunshine

I woke up this morning from one of those scary dreams where someone died and I'm not sure who. With Benadryl in my system, I went back to sleep for quite a while -- and the next dream cut through some of the turmoil but not all.

Long later I woke up to Summer Sunshine. Step Into Seattle Farmers Market was today's Squidoo Summer Sunshine winner -- $99 to my selected charity (the Grameen Foundation) and $99 to me. Well -- the person yesterday evening who I gave almost the last $.50 in my purse to for a crucial phone call said the karma would come back. He said the karma comes back when you think you can't take another step.
The next blog entry might (once again) appear under this one. Some posts I start but don't finish right off.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Reflection: Living Spaces

Decisions -- and moves, too, most likely. Times are tight, oh yes, and putting out money for medical tests is surely the straw that could break the...

Priorities: One does what one needs to do, and what one feels they need to do. And so I've been looking up alternate housing situations.

There are times I have found myself missing the big old attic that I lived in for a while before my current studio. There were stairs right there in the unit, so it wouldn't have done once my cat got old. Now, though...

I called on a room (elsewhere) and ultimately was also shown a nicer room that shan't be renovated for a month or two. Perhaps I will. There's some safety in having options.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Reflection: The Fox and the Roses

Sometimes human interaction -- mine -- does seem like something straight out of The Little Prince. Here and there there's a fox; here and there there's a rose... Oh, and there are are a lot of other roses, too, growing together: roses who may be beautiful in their own right, but to whom I have a tendency to say inside my mind,

"You are not at all like my rose... As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

"One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

I may say it inside my mind... oh, but that doesn't mean I have never let that attitude seep out and show itself on the outside. There were times over the years when letting it show got me in some trouble.

I've been writing to a fox as of late. Some of my letters over the years to different people... well, they can be almost like blog posts. I may soon post excerpts from a letter to a fox. And the post may appear under this one (as I actually begun it before).

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Reflection: People as Poetry


Some of my blog posts grow out of letters. This one grows out of a letter to... well, I started to say "someone you don't know", but do I really know who might be reading on a particular day. It started with... No, it didn't start with, but it included a quote from an author who said poems are to be read --not analyzed -- as they're images from their creators' eyes.

About that quote: I am going back and forth on whether people are slightly like poems in that sense. On the one hand, I do sometimes get into reading people to unlock mysteries. On the other hand, they too can be seen as images from the author’s eye. One surely can get into trouble when they analyze and take apart and go on the basis of what they think they know as opposed to listening to the gestalt.

That picture of me writing is from many years ago -- I scan various things that I might use for photo-illustration, and sometimes I just go on a search through them.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Reflection: Those Who Hide Too Well Away

Another thought in the form of a poem:


We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout
But oh the agitated hear
Til someone really find us out...

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Audio Reflection: Keepsake Mill

My folks couldn't have envisioned this when they took that picture years ago: By gummit, that old photo is talking! Actually, it's reciting "Keepsake Mill" -- a poem that (though you wouldn't guess from its somber tones) actually comes from a volume of classic children's poems; it's one of a couple poems where the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, steps out of his 'child's garden' and speaks from across a span of a great many years.

It's a pragmatic thing in a way, finding more ways to put up audio online. I can put up another site/ domain with my InMotion hosting, and I hope to have Audio Reflections up within a few weeks. The site can give some support to other things I have on the web, so it's a practical move as well as a pet project. You know I'll maintain it! (I can get too exhausted to write, but I seldom get too exhausted to read aloud.)

This particular poem is also for people in my life, and those I miss. Speaking of which... The phone just rang, and I didn't answer it. Oh, bad me! Of course I'm not avoiding anyone -- just news of them. (How very... me.) Got to ease myself back into gear: Breathe in, breathe out, center...

But here's a poem, a slightly abridged version as I needed to get the piece down to sixty seconds (without going at too ridiculous a pace).

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Reflection: Scrub Scrubbing Away...

In one of my first attempts at magazine publishing (my brother and I had a magazine company that summer and gave our parents a subscription) I gave my mother and father step by step instructions about how properly to clean house. I know, I know... It seems a likely story.

Flash forward to the present: After 5 hours this weekend of cleaning -- appliances, walls, floor, windows -- does my studio apartment sparkle? Heavens, no! When it comes to the insides of cabinets and drawers, the clutter will make it quite a job -- I can't actually scrub 'til I can 'see ground'. At some point, I may need to bite the bullet and actually sort things. (I am much less fond of filing, sorting, and trashing than of scrubbing.) Of course, when it comes to the inside of stove and such the scrubbing itself is quite a job -- and I need to replenish my supply of abrasive sponges. Off I go again...

To what does the apartment owe this flurry of cleaning? Truth is, I think I'm going to need to move somewhere cheaper. The cost of some medical tests? Well, in an extended season of difficult times, that's the last straw in some ways. If those tests are so very important to me... well, looks like it will take some sacrifices elsewhere.

I still have my 'bad news shield' up as I rush about, busy-busy, trying to accomplish things and to put up some insurance again the dry season. I do need, very soon, to lower the shield a wee bit and let in a bit more of the world, and those people I love. Ah, now they're the ones that can make me fragile -- and sloppier and less accomplished. (They're worth it, though.)

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Reflection: Perched Here in Seattle

I wanted to leave that previous post up a few days because there is (very much!) a message in it to a few folks. I may have quite a lot to write come tomorrow, but today I will say just a wee bit here. Because... Well, I worry about people when I can't reach them. So if anyone returns the favor...

As hard as I may have been to reach lately (if anyone but the Subfinder is trying!) I am right here in Seattle. And -- though my mind is quite far away -- I'll post a link to a bit of the land outside my window: Step Into Seattle Farmers Market

Getting ready to meditate now...