Monthly Archives: February 2020

Peeking at the sun

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Suburban sunset

I saw the sun for about two minutes today. I was at work, looking out my window at the same gray sky I’d seen all day long, when someone stopped by to say there was color in the western sky. I’m desperate for sunlight and color these days, so off I went to an empty office on the west side of the building.

Sure enough, just above the horizon but partially hidden behind a tall building, was a bit of sunset. Not much, but we’ll take what we can get. I took this photo through the dirty office window, which might actually have enhanced the color. I haven’t retouched it; that doesn’t seem honest. I’m thinking about posting a picture a day until the sun comes back out for real. I’ll have to think that through, since today’s picture isn’t at all indicative of what most of the day looked like. It’s the high point.

Journal of gratitude

Rolo on my lap

So I’m grateful today to have had at least a couple of minutes of sunset with color and light in the sky. I’m also thankful to have a husband cooking dinner for me at the end of my 11-hour workday, and for the two old dogs’ continued health, which like the sun is a day-by-day proposition.

Yesterday’s high point was writing. Not only did I publish two blog posts; I also wrote two poems. They are admittedly short poems, but poems nonetheless and ones that I’m pleased with.

My Oscars moment

And then there were the Oscars. I didn’t care much about the nominated films, although I did really enjoy Jojo Rabbit—one of the few I had seen. But I pretty much melted from the cuteness of Jojo’s two featured child actors on the red carpet. I looked for a video of Roman Griffin Davis, the child star of the film, running to greet someone in the crowd with a huge grin on his face. I couldn’t find that, so I’ll settle for this photo montage of him with Archie Yates:

After that I just don’t have the heart to criticize anyone’s outfit. I’m going back to YouTube to watch more videos of these two stealing hearts in their interviews.

Tree reading

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Looking up into the tree
The Hidden Life of Trees

Looking for a good book? Nonfiction? I’m eyeball deep for the second time in The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, by Peter Wohlleben. If you’ve not read it, do. It will introduce you to a world of wonder.

I read this little tome about three months back, bookmarked about 40 of its 250 pages, and returned it to the library only reluctantly, after I reached the renewal limit. I honestly thought I was done with it at that point (having removed all of my bookmarks). But today I thought of something I learned from it, and I wanted to know I had the right details, so I headed back to the library and checked it out again.

I planned to just look up the one detail I wondered about, but I find myself instead re-reading from page 1. I might just wind up buying the book.

Trees can live for centuries; their roots live even longer

This is something I love about books: I never know when one is going to take me by surprise and send me skittering down a rabbit hole to discover a new world. It’s intoxicating.

Re-reading, rewriting

So intoxicating that it sometimes inspires me. When I first read this book, I pulled out pencil and paper and started drawing; that’s something that happens only rarely. The reason I needed the book again today is because a fact from it started to make its way into a poem I was writing. I kept writing—if you’re me, you don’t risk interrupting a creative process, even for something the creation needs—and flagged the questionable detail to check later.

So here I am, ready to fact check, and instead I’ve fallen back into the wonderland of this book.

At some point, I’m confident I’ll come across the detail I need. I only hope that by then I remember why I need it.

Sprawling tree, New Orleans

Oscars Sunday

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Mannequins

It’s Oscars Sunday, which doesn’t usually mean a whole lot to me. I’m not a person who goes out to watch every nominated movie (though I wonder if you folks who are have noticed that the Academy nominates a crap-ton more movies than it used to, and do you really not think that’s just to get your butt in the seat more often?). I do love the gala spectacle and the fashion, though, so I sit at the TV looking for best and worst dresses and suits.

This year, my husband and I did catch the program of Oscar-nominated animated shorts in our local movie theater, though. I have to say it was pretty disappointing.

The husband has written all about it in his column on Escape into Life, but here’s what I have to say. There were about eight or nine shorts in the program, and we were halfway through before I finally saw one that I could be happy to see win the Oscar. Then I realized it was a Pixar entry, and my happiness waned because, honestly, it’s just another sunny Sunday from Pixar (not that I couldn’t use a little more sun). Fabulous animation, adorable characters, quirky, funny—which for Pixar is just a commercially successful formula. I wish someone else had done it.

But yes, it could win an Oscar because it’s that good.

Then we sat through a couple more “meh” items and one utterly horrendous thing that required a narrator to tell you what was going on. That was followed by a beauty from Ireland, and then we were watching a French entrant, Hors piste, (the third French one on the program, if I recall correctly)—and suddenly half the theatre was laughing aloud, including us.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

I kid you not: this was the only piece on the program that drew a response from anyone in the theatre, and half the crowd was guffawing. And then we got home and discovered, as the husband began to write his column, that … wait for it … this short is not even on the list of Oscar nominees. WTAF?

So we will watch the envelope get opened tonight while we are rooting for a film that isn’t even nominated.

I just hope whoever’s reading the winner’s name will be wearing either a fabulous or utterly horrid outfit.

Grim or hopeful – it’s day by day

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Depending who’s doing the counting, we had either one or two days of sunlight – any sunlight – in the month of January. It was pretty grim, and many of us got cranky as the month went on. The state of our nation and its politics can’t have helped. Many of us either sat glued to our news sources, unable to tear our attention away from an impeachment spectacle, or tried to ignore the whole thing. In the end, I doubt anyone’s opinion had changed on either side, and I for one was exhausted.

On Feb. 1, late in the day, the sun peaked out for about five minutes. My husband and I were walking our dogs, and I pulled out my camera. That’s the photo you see here, unretouched. Nature is glorious.

I wrote a poem in the midst of it, struggling against pessimism, flirting with hope. The act of writing is itself optimistic, I believe, and hope may triumph if I send it off to a journal in search of a home. We’ll see.

Published!

restaurant window looking out

Meanwhile, I’ve had a couple of other pieces published that I failed to note here. Way back in November, my poem Buoyant found a home in goodbaad poetry journal. It was just republished at Escape into Life this week, accompanied by an original illustration by my talented husband. I’m thrilled that it has some legs—especially given that legs feature prominently in it.

I’ve also had another poem accepted at Tiny Seed Literary Journal, where it’s due to be published in March. Stay tuned!

Also over at Escape, you can find my recent review of True Confessions 1965 to Now, a lovely collection of poetry by John Guzlowski. His poems are simultaneously plain-spoken and profound, painting the world in both its beauty and horror. A couple of the poems in the book were first published on Escape, so if you read the review you’ll find links to those pieces so you can sample the book before deciding to buy it. Also, here are two recent poems from his Twitter feed that I quite like: