My work week was a busy one, and I got behind in some places, including here. But I did manage to post a little bit of poetry to the front stoop. As a result, today we have a double edition of #frontstooppoetry.

Perhaps because the week was so busy, and perhaps because this country feels so fully dystopian, this rather free-form question spilled out of me on Wednesday. (It got dated Wednesday-Thursday on the chalkboard because it was late at night and I (rightly, as it happens) anticipated I wouldn’t get a chance to replace it the following day.)

Time seems these days to have folded itself; somehow the world seems to be moving simultaneously at hyperspeed and in slow motion. A single day seems to speed by in an unending barrage of extremist news from Washington, yet the long-term passage of time seems excruciatingly slow. How long will it take the coming years to go by?

Add in the fact that the Trump administration is trying to return us to the 1950s or earlier, and my sense of time has turned inside out.

Today, though, I found inspiration in the book I’m currently reading, The Diary of Frida Kahlo.

Friday started keeping a journal sometime in her 40s, sadly near the end of her life, and it’s both written and visual. Filled with casual drawings—almost doodles, really—it’s gorgeous to look at. And the writing is beautiful as well, quite free-form, almost stream of consciousness. It’s more a journal of her thoughts than a chronicle of what was happening in her life. Written in Spanish, the book includes an English translation with notes, so I go back and forth between the full-page color originals and the translation/notes.

This book is beautiful in every way, and I’ve ordered my own copy so I can have it nearby after returning this copy to my library. Meanwhile, I’ve written out several passages as found poems, and that’s what made it to the chalkboard today.

Postcarding

One of the friends I correspond with regularly via postcard wrote to me recently that she’s finding it hard to create art during the Trump Administration. Me, too, my friend—I hear you. Today, though, I found myself able to make postcards for the first time in weeks (possibly thanks to Frida’s diary?). For whatever reason, it was a much-needed catharsis. And I’m ready to share the love. I’m hoping to use these to prompt myself to write to more than the couple of friends I regularly trade cards with. Those friends will get the first, of course, but there are plenty to go to others as well. Here’s a sampling.

What I’m grateful for today

• Frida Kahlo
• A burst of creativity
• Libraries and bookstores