Year in Review: February 2010

Posted on January 3, 2011 by randomyriad

I

My Life

At the coop school, my shrinking class was planning a garden project, and I was doing a lot of writing and thinking about my work with children.

February is often for me a  passage way that connects January to March, that starts out dim, damp and chill and by the end warms and brightens to almost spring. I can’t remember anything much happening in February.

II

My Region

The Winter Olympics came to our area, but had almost no impact on my life, being way to expensive to even dream of attending, plus you had to have a passport to get into Canada (actually to come back. How crazy is that?) I watched The Colbert Report for updates like everyone else.

III

Writing

I was struggling with many projects River of Dreams and Aranansi and a couple that went nowhere.

Here are some of my very scattered and dream laced journal entries:

2/1/2010:

Bus conversation:

“Mind over matter.”

“We’ll find out what’s wrong with you at the autopsy.”


2/9/2010:

A balloon flew up into the clouds over the river away from a small boy.


2/10/2010:

I am at a loss abut what to write. I seem to have lost momentum over the last couple of days.

I dreamed about New England Land of rolling green hills and Grecian colonial style houses as if in a painting or tapestry, but still real. A park of lush, spacious green with white stately buildings, there were children playing where they shouldn’t. It wasn’t ready yet.

2/12/2010:

Today I have time and nothing to say. I am blurred by sleepiness. I read 2 novels by Brautigan. I believe I have now read everything he published.

“Morality is the blind spot of the brain.” A Season in Hell

“Kimmeria: the land of shadows and whirlwinds”

2/12/2010

Penumbra= Almost Shadow: the animal people of the shadows

Tenebra= Blind Town

Thurible: Censor

“She dazzles like the dawn and consoles like the night.”

(I believe I was reading Dante’s Inferno at this point as well as A Season in Hell)

2/18/2010:

I was hiding in a classroom were a lesson on Icelandic was in progress, and she was hiding there too. We started touching and knew we had to find a place to be alone away from the students. The teacher was writing on a giant Kindle board in perfect fonts both Icelandic and English.

I took her to the house I lived in with my family when I was a teenager. Everything was piled around and the beds all unmade but sheeted and bedding piled everywhere. I was in the large downstairs bedroom when people came gliding out of a secret door, 2 giant women looking for my wife, Mary.

“Is she here?”

I didn’t know.

There was a long procession of these hunched and walk/gliding figures off into some vague misty land at the back of the house.

2/20/2010:

Too many children and dyed rags hidden under the folds of cardboard.

What about Baudelaire and men in France who did not seem to know about children. Sebold also. Belano seems to have had some contact with children. Salinger had children and enjoyed them.

Children are distracting and irritating when you are trying to think of anything on a deeper level. Their thoughts and lives are lived on the surface of their world. Their concerns are usually simple, but not easily expressed. They are a puzzle because they don’t have a clear enough thought process to communicate what is important to them. They must act it out or sing or dance or draw.

I think somewhere along the way we let words replace all the languages our bodies contain. We pour it all into words, and words are not big enough or have leaks. So much is lost of who we are, and that is where art comes in.

And yet living a life around children makes it difficult to actually work as an artist, but especially a writer, for words are so obviously inadequate when you are trying to take care of all the little boring tasks and big worries of raising small human beings.

2/21/2010:

Puppet to Another Puppet: I am not a puppet and I won’t be manipulated. No strings. See!

The puppeteer is visible above operating the puppet but the strings are not visible.

“Do Not  Move”

(I was thinking a lot about all kinds of Puppets)

2/23/2010:

Japanese face painting

My dreams are lost in the drone of life.

IV

A February Poem


Every shred of calligraphic skin

shed in lumps

and spread thin.

Time bights that hand

and tears

with teeth that hold iron

  begin to grin.

Posted in All part of the process, Aranansi, Bus Writing, conversations, Dreamtime, Family, Fiction, file folders and nut shells, House and home, mindworks, my life, novel projects, Other peoples words, paying attention, personal history, poetry, Puppetry, Questions and riddles, River of Dreams, scenes on screens, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, visions from the dark side, winter, Word play, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Year in Review: January 2010

Posted on January 2, 2011 by randomyriad

I

My Life

My year started with watching part of Poltergeist II with my heart broken daughter (all that is fixed now). There is a point when you just can’t hear the name “Carole Anne,” called in a quavery voice one more time so I went to bed before the shocking finale.

We were living in an ancient, broke-down, drafty, mouse infested farm house on the top of a tremendously steep hill which made bicycling quite a challenge. It was quiet and surrounded by trees, and I was able to walk  to work in about an hour through nice neighborhoods and forest and along a lake shore. So it wasn’t all bad.

Mary was knee deep in nursing school, while my new job at the coop school was tenuous and heading into its ultimate demise. I had to cash out my retirement account so that we could make it through to the summer when Mary would hopefully have a job.

I was watching Kurosawa movies on the weekends.

Our washer and dryer were out of commission so we had to do laundry at the laundromat (this is not fixed yet).

Overall it was a month of intense creativity. I was working on many stories and poems and writing almost everywhere I went (especially on the bus). I started many of the projects that I  put up on my blog later in the year (Aranansi and the Personal Tour of the Anatomy).

II

In the U.S.

J. D. Salinger and Howard Zinn died, and the specter of greed haunted the land.



III

The World

A massive earthquake devastated Haiti.

 

All in all a pretty bleak start to a challenging year for most of the world, maybe not so much for the very rich.


Posted in bodyworks, Bus Writing, can't really complain but, change, Family, House and home, my life, paying attention, personal history, thinking in words, time travel, Walking, winter, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Vague and Plausible Resolutions

Posted on January 1, 2011 by randomyriad

I have decided this year to have resolutions that are goals that guide my day to day living. It just seems to be the only useful way of resolving anything for a whole year in years that seem to be twisting, undulating, labyrinthine paths through a foggy landscape. I can only try my live in a way that optimizes what I find on what I expect will be another random and often baffling  journey through the year to come.

1. I will be productive each day, doing something creative or inspiring that will carry into following days.

2. I will keep a positive attitude while paying honest attention to what is going in my life.

3. I will appreciate what I have and seek to make a positive difference in the lives of the people that are part of my life.

I will attempt these things with the foreknowledge that I will fail some days, but I hope to use this as a guide to get me back on the track when I derail. It can’t hurt and just might come in handy along the way like a little flashlight if I find myself in a dark and strange place.


Posted in All part of the process, can't really complain but, change, discovery and recovery, Family, House and home, lists, my life, paying attention, the end is the beginning, thinking in words, working world | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

5 Favorite Albums and Books

Posted on December 31, 2010 by randomyriad

These are albums and books that I came across this year. Many of them are not new, just new to me.

1. The Suburbs by Arcade Fire:

This is such a richly textured mix of instruments, musical ideas, and thoughtful lyrics.

2. High Violet by The National:

I love the combination of the deep resonant vocals and complex music. The mood of the lyrics and music fit so perfectly.

3. Lungs by Florence and the Machine:

I don’t know how to classify this. It is definitely accessible and pop, but she has such an interesting and powerful voice. The music is like White Stripes though a little more subtle and complex.

4. The Enchantment by Chick Corea and Bela Fleck:

Awesome jazz in many styles on with banjo and piano. So simple yet so multifaceted.

5. There is No Enemy by Built to Spill:

I was introduced to this band by my 19 year old son. I was immediately taken by the sound that has obvious grunge roots but with an original mature madness. I went to a live show with my son and came away even more impressed.

Books

1.The Border Trilogy, Blood Meridian, and No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy:

His masterful use of language makes reading him worthwhile even though he is heavy handed with violence and the often grim and overtly masculine light that he casts over his subject is at times oppressive. He is great at having his characters tell stories.

2. The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare:

A very dense and involving meditation and investigation of whales and whaling from both a literary and historical perspectives. Challenging, for not so intellectual me, but well worth the struggle.

3.Housekeeping and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson:

Both fascinating and dense first person character studies as if you are living in another persons life. I can’t wait to read her most recent novel “Home.”

4. Middlemarch and Silas Marner by George Eliot:

Written in the mid 1800’s, these novels, especially Middlemarch, treat their subjects with such honesty and unsentimental compassion. She left me with a feeling of hope for humanity in spite of the petty prejudices and short sightedness of people in general.

5.The Reefs of Earth and The Devil is Dead by R. A. Lafferty:

Wonderfully written non-sense and tall tales about aliens among us from the late nineteen sixties. I read the Devil is Dead when I was a teenager and enjoyed as much or more this time around. I had to go to used book stores to get these. He is a truly mad practitioner storytelling through the use of dark humor and bright lively language.

Posted in Check this out, Fiction, lists, music, my museum of inspiration | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What a Long Strange Year It Has Been

Posted on December 31, 2010 by randomyriad

Illustrated World/ December 2010

This has been a year of great change around here, and probably for many families. Some years are just like that. I lost my job and found another one almost as good. My lovely wife graduated from nursing school and got an exciting part time job helping mentally ill people and then, just last week, got a full-time job in a long term care facility, which she is looking forward to starting on Monday. We moved all of our family(all 5 of us including the one who was living independently), into a three bedroom, one bath house, because for reasons not entirely clear our ex-landlord told us we had to move. Now, after my daughter moved into university housing and my oldest moved back out on his own, my wife, my youngest, and I are living in this much more pleasant house. It is much more urban and noisy, but we have no little furry creatures roaming our walls which are now actually insulated so winter doesn’t join us on the inside of the house. Our children have all made a big step into there adult lives in very positive ways. They continue to thrive and become people we like to be around and respect. That is probably enough to make this year a good year.

I am reading through my journal and posts from the last year to put things in proper order help me remember the little events that seemed big at the time. I think I will take the next 12 days to write a little about each month from my now perspective in order to put some closure on it all and feel the coming year flowing out of the past. I think it will be a great year. Although there are a few weird lingering affects staggering from the year that has been into our new one, the prospects for a good year are visible. I intend to approach this year in a cautiously positive way, and hope that works out. I think it will. I just know not to count on anything good or bad being as actually good or bad as it seems when I first come across it and to be open to learning from whatever comes along. I am starting this year with a thriving family, a good job, and a good attitude which if I can just keep it going will make a heck of a good year by my count.


Posted in All part of the process, can't really complain but, change, Collage, discovery and recovery, Family, House and home, mindworks, my life, paying attention, the end is the beginning, thinking in words, working world | Tagged , , | Leave a comment