Monday, July 18, 2011

Cherries & the Summer of Love



All the wheels are wheeling and the direction they go nobody knows. I've been putting my shoulder to the wheel. The bluegrass home has proven to be quite productive as the weather stays wet and warm outside and inside the words keep coming. I've stopped agonizing over leaving Sonoma Valley for the time being. I love it there, and it will be there when I return. For now, it is this lovely view and the view of the world I am creating in my brain.



Hiking by the big muddy Kentucky River, all the trees were leaning hard into the sky. Sharks in the Rivers went into its second printing and new readings were booked for the fall (click on the Readings link above). Poems have been coming far and few as most things have become about the novel. I'm starting to see how this is done. Slowly.



What it's like to build a home together. What it's like to work from home together. All this learning and the wonderful man who keeps me laughing through it all. Grilling in the backyard, so many vegetables in the garden, so many bugs in the bluegrass blue sky. I'm learning to live in the flux. Flux it.



All this joy I keep eating in the form of cherries. Lips red and raw from all this joy. New poems coming out in journals, and a new interview over here. Friend and fellow vagabond, Alex Battles has released his fabulous songs here, buy them, support him. Sharon Salzberg, the woman who has undoubtably helped me calm my brain and become a less frantic depressed soul has released a new book (audio too!) and I recommend it highly. Also, Don't Kill the Birthday Girl a memoir from dear friend Sandra Beasley has just come out this week. As we like to say in my family. "Take a look, check it out!"In the meantime, all these real cherries to eat in the real summer of love.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Behold the Rising Tide


Some turning point, whether it was the June 15th big moon event, or just some switch of summer that turned the faucet to hot and hell yeah, everything's been a little better lately, a little more golden. The work on the novel is moving along, and so as a reward, I took myself and my ma to the beach. I found a note I wrote to myself in my novel notebook that said, "Stay brave & open." Ok.
This guy snuck up on us. I defeated him and then put him in my pocket.

Limantour Beach (by Point Reyes Station) was 74 degrees and poetry-worthy weather.
I like grass.

All the real green grass of the real world was real pretty.

The day made me think of Robert Hass, one of my favorite poets, and his poem, "Interrupted Meditation" that ends this way.

"Everyone their own devastation. Each on its own scale.
I don't know what the key opens. I know we die,
and don’t know what is at the end. We don’t behave well.
And there are monsters out there, and millions of others
to carry out their orders. We live half our lives
in fantasy, and words. This morning I am pretending
to be walking down the mountain in the heat.
A vault of blue sky, traildust, the sweet medicinal
scent of mountain grasses, and at trailside—
I'm a little ashamed that I want to end this poem
singing, but I want to end this poem singing—the wooly
closed-down buds of the sunflower to which, in English,
someone gave the name, sometime, of pearly everlasting."